hCentive’s solution to the Obamacare subsidies debate

Five years in, President Obama’s healthcare law is still not out of the woods. Allow hCentive to offer a solution that might provide a quick fix to the legal quagmire, while improving its own bottom line.
“States setting up their own health insurance exchanges,” said VJ Bala, the VP of marketing and growth initiatives. “[That] would be a natural solution.” The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June whether federally-run healthcare exchanges can qualify for tax subsidies under the law.
hCentive, which has built state-run exchanges for five states, plus the federal government, launched a new product last month: WebInsure State Exchange Lease.
In lieu of a building a new platform from scratch, “we offer the technology for health insurance exchanges as a lease,” explained Bala.”By taking the technology into our side, we operate on behalf of the state and therefore we are able to do it much faster [and] with a lot less risk.”
hCentive would charge states a one-time set-up fee, plus additional charges depending on the number of people enrolled. Websites would take about six months to build — and the states could save up and forgo federal grants, said Bala.
Since it was founded in 2009 — a year before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law — hCentive has seen a meteoric rise, growing from five to over 750 employees in six years. (About 125 work in the company’s Reston headquarters. The R&D center is in India.)