The challenge
In June 2019, new federal regulations created the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement, or ICHRA, letting employers offer employees funds to buy coverage on the individual market in place of traditional group coverage. The complication: an ICHRA offer could affect an individual’s eligibility for premium tax credits, creating tax consequences down the road. State-Based Marketplaces needed a calculator to help consumers navigate the new complexity, and in the past, each state would have paid a separate vendor to build the same tool, spending millions to build the same thing many times over.
The approach
IdeaCrew brought a different approach, rooted in open-source code and shared services so marketplaces get the most for their money. We partnered with Princeton University’s State Health and Value Strategies to develop a solution that could work for every state, not just one, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Working with 14 of the 16 SBMs, we convened regular meetings of technical and operations staff, developed business requirements, deployed functionality in sprints, and managed stakeholder testing. We became expert in the unique rating rules and SERFF templates of each marketplace, built an administrative portal with scripts for automated installation in AWS and Azure, and made the tool fully editable and translatable, available in English and Spanish and architected for any language.
The outcome
IdeaCrew delivered the tool in just six weeks, in time for open enrollment, and offered to host it free during open enrollment for any state that wanted it. California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia all used it. The project is a clear expression of IdeaCrew’s belief in shared services: rather than 14 states each paying to solve the same problem, one open-source tool served them all.
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