Enroll America convened a national conference this week in Washington to review the strategies that proved successful during the inaugural Affordable Care Act open enrollment period and 聽to 聽gear up for the next one, which will start Nov. 15.
Organizers also want to ensure that the navigators and organizations working toward enrollment maintain their energy — despite reports of Medicaid applications and continuing 聽in some .
鈥淚t鈥檚 energizing people and bringing them together and reminding them why they got into the work in the first place,鈥 said Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a nonprofit group organized primarily to sign up consumers for聽new health coverage. 鈥淲e鈥檙e five months out, so it鈥檚 time to be implementing and outreaching.鈥
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, was among those at the conference Tuesday to offer a list of accomplishments. Kentucky, he said, enrolled 421,410 people in individual health coverage either via , the state鈥檚 online insurance portal, or Medicaid.聽 Seventy-five percent of them had never had health care insurance before.
Beshear credits this public response to the decision to insulate kynect from the affiliation with the national health law The enrollment numbers suggest that worked. In Kentucky, traditionally considered a red state, .
Looking forward, he also said that the re-election efforts of naysayer lawmakers — those who have worked so hard to discredit and disband the overhaul — will come down to how people with the new coverage experience the benefits of the law.
Meanwhile, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told attendees that they were pivotal in making the first enrollment season successful. 鈥淵ou combated relentless misinformation and obstruction, people who were faced with getting fingerprinted and paying a fee in order to help access care,鈥 Sebelius said.
But challenges are ahead, Filipic, Enroll America’s president, said. Getting current enrollees to renew their exchange plans will be a major effort.
鈥淭here have been bumps along the road, and that will continue, but we will continue to dig in and identify issues and make this [signing up and staying enrolled] as consumer-friendly as possible,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he vast majority of people are happy, and of course you run into people that it鈥檚 different from what they鈥檝e expected. At that point, we work to connect them with people that can provide answers, like insurers or the federal hotline.鈥
Filipic noted that the Centers for Medicare聽& Medicaid Services聽recently announced in funds for navigators in the 2015 enrollment period. 鈥淚n-person assistance is critical, and we need more folks involved and to let those navigators provide help to people.鈥
But Daniel Hilferty, president and CEO of Independence Blue Cross in southeastern Pennsylvania, who also spoke at the meeting, said the overall success of the law and its ability to improve health is tied to the financial sustainability of the program. He said that states will have increased costs in several years for the new Medicaid enrollees and will want results. 鈥淯nless we show outcomes in real time data, it鈥檚 all for naught,鈥 he said.
