Dive Brief:

• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and DirectHealth.com, an online health insurance agency that allows visitors to compare insurance plans, announced a partnership to help people navigate their health insurance choices through Medicare and the health plans available under the Affordable Care Act.

• Wal-Mart is calling the program “Healthcare Begins Here,” and is running it starting this week for two months.

• Licensed insurance agents from DirectHealth will work with consumers through half of Wal-Mart’s stores nationwide during the Medicare and ACA open enrollment periods this month and next.

Dive Insight:

Selecting health insurance is a notoriously confusing situation for many people, and more people are confronting the task now that the Affordable Care Act has made health care policies more widely available and affordable. Providing insurance help is yet another service Wal-Mart offers that is not often readily available to many lower-income consumers​.

“Our goal is to be the number one health-care provider in the industry,” Labeed Diab, president of health and wellness for Wal-Mart U.S., told the Washington Post. “And the more we broaden our assortment, the more we broaden our offering, the more we educate the customer Wal-Mart is a great place to create a one-stop shop.”