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Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE)

What is Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE)?

Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE) is a service that allows approved entities to enroll consumers in Marketplace qualified health plans (QHPs), with income-based subsidies if they’re subsidy eligible, without the enrollee needing to visit the HealthCare.gov website.¹

EDE entities integrate with the HealthCare.gov system through application programming interfaces (APIs), which facilitate eligibility determinations, enrollment, and customer service.¹ Using the EDE entity’s website takes the place of a visit to HealthCare.gov for the consumer and for their broker, if they’re using one. The EDE can facilitate the consumer’s application for premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions,² and consumers can utilize the EDE website to upload necessary documents and download notices from the Marketplace.¹

Enhanced Direct Enrollment has historically only been available in states that use the federally facilitated Marketplace (HealthCare.gov).³ But Georgia began using a state-run Marketplace platform starting in November 2024, and was the first state-run Marketplace to partner with EDEs.⁴

(As of the 2026 plan year, Georgia's is still the only state-run Marketplace that uses EDEs.)⁵

What percentage of Marketplace enrollments are facilitated by an EDE?

We don’t have current data for how many people enrolled via the EDE pathway in recent years. The most recent data published by CMS is from early 2021.⁶

But during the open enrollment period for 2023 coverage, 57% of all active enrollments in the federally facilitated Marketplace were through EDEs and “classic” direct enrollment (DE) entities.⁷ And if we only consider broker-assisted active plan selections, EDE and DE pathways accounted for 81% of them during the open enrollment period for 2023 coverage.

With classic direct enrollment, the DE entity’s website facilitates the enrollment process, but the consumer does have to be directed to HealthCare.gov to complete the eligibility application. They are then redirected back to the DE entity’s website to select a plan and enroll.⁸ For the first five years that Marketplaces were operational, classic DE was the only option for entities that wished to partner directly with HealthCare.gov. That changed in the fall of 2018, when the EDE pathway became available.⁹

And starting in the fall of 2025, for enrollment in 2026 coverage, CMS announced that the classic DE pathway could no longer be used by any entities with EDE status, and that new applications for the classic DE pathway would no longer be accepted.¹⁰ So while DE and EDE coexisted for several years, CMS has transitioned facilitating only the EDE pathway.

What entities can provide enhanced direct enrollment?

When the EDE program debuted in 2018, there were only eight approved EDE entities, including two web brokers and six issuers (insurance companies).¹¹ But the program has grown considerably since then. As of August 2024, 73 entities were approved as EDEs. Eleven of them had created their own EDE platforms, while the rest were leasing one of those 11 approved EDE platforms.¹² (As of late 2025, the August 2024 list was still the most recent available on the CMS webpage about EDE.)

Most of the EDE entities are issuers, although most of the entities that are hosting their own EDE platforms are web brokers.¹²

If an EDE entity is an issuer, it will generally display only its own qualified health plans.¹³ But if the EDE entity is a web broker, it must display all available QHPs that the enrollee would see if they visited HealthCare.gov. If the web broker isn’t able to provide enrollment support for certain QHPs, it “must prominently display a disclaimer provided by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and provide a link to HealthCare.gov”¹³ that the consumer can use if they wish to enroll in one of the plans for which the EDE does not provide enrollment support.

An EDE entity might not operate in all states that use HealthCare.gov. In that case, the EDE can only assist consumers in states where the EDE operates.²

Two EDEs were suspended by CMS in 2024, due to “anomalous activity” related to unauthorized enrollments and plan changes, and those EDEs were implicated in a civil lawsuit filed by consumers and agents who were affected by the fraudulent enrollments.¹⁴¹⁵ (That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed after the parties reached a settlement.)¹⁶

The suspended EDEs subsequently filed a lawsuit against CMS in an effort to get their EDE status restored,¹⁷ but the case was subsequently dismissed.¹⁸

What rules do EDEs have to follow?

EDEs are prohibited from utilizing marketing approaches that might “mislead a consumer into believing they are visiting HealthCare.gov.” However, they can use certain terminology on their website to clarify their EDE status. This includes the phrases “CMS Partner,” “CMS Approved Enhanced Direct Enrollment Entity,” “Enrollment Partner,” “HealthCare.gov Partner,” “CMS Partner Website,” or “CMS Partner Entity.”¹⁹

EDE entities that also offer non-Marketplace plans must display them on a separate page of their website, and cannot market these plans during a consumer’s Marketplace plan selection and enrollment process.⁷

CMS has noted that the process of getting approved as an EDE entity “may take up to a year or more” to complete.²

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