When you're building out community-rated quotes, you don't always need to start from scratch. If you have an existing plan that's close to what you need, you can copy it and adjust from there — saving time when you're working through multiple options or carriers.

This feature also solves a specific problem that comes up regularly with community-rated markets: carriers sometimes publish plans and rates for part of the year, then stop making them available for subsequent quarters. The copy function lets you work around that gap.

Why This Matters: Carriers That Publish Plans Seasonally

Some carriers file their community-rated plans and rates early in the year but don't make them available for later quarters. Blue Cross of Massachusetts follows this pattern consistently — plans and rates are filed in the first quarter, but retrieving those rates for Q2, Q3, or Q4 is often not possible through the standard API. A similar situation came up in Connecticut, where Anthem filed plans for the first two quarters of 2026 and then explicitly requested that their Pathway plan rates be removed for the remainder of the year.

When a carrier's plans are no longer available through the rating engine, Plansight can't pull rates for them automatically. That's where certified plans come in.

Certified Plans and HIOS IDs

Plans that come back through the community-rated rating engine carry a HIOS ID — a standardized identifier tied to each specific plan filing. When a carrier stops making a plan available mid-year, that plan and its HIOS ID disappear from the available pool.

Copying a plan creates a certified plan — a user-uploaded version that you build and maintain directly. Because you're creating it manually, it isn't dependent on the carrier's API availability. This lets you present a plan that was previously quotable, even when the carrier has pulled it from the rating system for the current period.

The tradeoff: you'll need to obtain the actual rates from the carrier directly. The copy gives you the plan structure and attributes as a starting point, but the rates for the new period will need to come from the carrier and be entered manually.

How the Copy Works

Inside the community-rated quotes section, each plan card has a copy option. When you copy a plan, Plansight duplicates the plan details — carrier, network, deductible, and any other attributes already filled in — and creates a new editable version you can modify independently.

This is useful when you want to:

• Present a second option from the same carrier with a different deductible or network tier
• Quickly build out an alternative without re-entering shared plan details
• Carry forward a plan that was available in a prior quarter but is no longer in the rating engine
• Compare two similar plans side by side without starting each one from scratch

Assign the Copy to an Option

After copying, you assign the new plan to the appropriate option — option one or option two — depending on how you've structured your presentation. The option assignment controls where the plan appears in the comparison and how it's grouped for employees on the census.

Once assigned, open the plan and make whatever changes apply: update the rates you've received from the carrier, swap the network, adjust the deductible, or update any other attributes. Everything else carries over from the original.

The Result in Your Presentation

As soon as the copied plan is saved and assigned, it flows into the presentation automatically alongside your other community-rated quotes. Current, renewal, and alternative plans stay organized without any additional setup.