Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City has launched the the areas first private health insurance exchange for small businesses and individuals.

The private health insurance exchange is called Blue KC.  It is available for employers and employees of small business as well as individuals who currently have Direct Pay health plans.

Through Blue KC, shoppers have the ability to compare rates for 10 different health plans.

BCBSKC hopes to make the exchange available to additional product segments in the latter part of 2012

Note:  While Blue KC Exchange is positioned as a private health insurance exchange similar to what shoppers will experience with the gov’t exchange in 2014, in our testing we only saw products offered by BCBSKC and not plans offered by other health insurance companies – which i guess should be no surprise.

Written by Jeff Levy