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Health Insurance Exchange - HIX

Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX) or in Maryland, we refer to it as MHIX for the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange. You may have heard of private exchanges and public exchanges. InsurancePickle.com is a private exchange. It has been a private health insurance exchange since before the term health insurance exchange was a term. An exchange is an aggregator of multiple carriers in one place. We also cost about $200 million dollars less than the Maryland exchange, and have been doing this for about 15 years.

Public exchanges are run by the state or federal government. You can still use brokers to go through the exchanges. If you are in Washington DC, then you have no choice but to go through the exchange in DC. Anywhere else, you can either buy your health ON or OFF the exchanges. They are the same plans, at the same rate, and fall under the same rules.

To be clear, the Affordable Care Act (nicknamed "Obamacare") is just a law that regulates health insurance. You cannot buy an "Obamacare" plan because there is no such thing. All insurance plans are covered by the law. The law dictates whether the health insurance plan is qualified, non-qualified, grandfathered, or non-grandfathered.

Read our articles to learn all about the exchanges. Make no mistake that, other than DC, you do not have to buy through an exchange unless you want subsidies. Sometimes you will qualify for subsidies and realize it is not worth the hassle. We normally recommend getting a plan in place off the exchange first, and then maybe consider doing it through the exhange if you would like.

It will cost you the same no matter where you buy, so when you make your decision, please support our site and make your purchase here. Thank you!