Obamacare Provides a Way for E-Business to Profit

Come 2014—providing the Supreme Court upholds the health-reform law—millions of Americans will be able to shop for government-subsidized health insurance online, comparing policies the way they troll for airline tickets on Travelocity or Expedia. States are required to set up these so-called exchanges for an estimated 22 million employees of small businesses and uninsured Americans. For months the assumption has been that states would also run them.

Turns out there’s now a way for business to get in on the action. Buried in a 644-page rule the administration recently issued is a provision allowing private insurance brokers to sell the coverage. “That’s a game changer, big time,” says Cindy Gillespie, head of health-care policy in Washington at law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. Small businesses and the self-employed have turned to online brokers for health-plan options since the ’90s. EHealth, the biggest, had 815,000 enrollees as of late 2011, according to regulatory filings. The provision is “going to put these private Internet portals, the regional brokers, the EHealths, on steroids,” says Gillespie.