Thursday, April 7, 2016

Health insurance navigators discuss hiccups after 3rd open enrollment

After 3 years and three open enrollment periods, the navigators trained to assist persons in West Virginia enroll in health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act gathered to talk about the victories and issues that they faced in the year 2016.


The West Virginia Primary Care Association, the WV Healthy Start Navigator Program and West Virginians for Affordable Health Care had an ACA enrollment debriefing for the 3rd year in a row on the day of Tuesday in Charleston. The coalition, which had a similar event in Morgantown earlier this year, invited those whose work is assisting folks enroll in Medicaid or individual marketplace plans to share their experiences with regional and national partners.


Joanne Grossi, the Region III director for U.S. Health and Human Resources, as well as Rachel Linstead Goldsmith, the regional director for Enroll America, were on hand to answer queries about this year’s enrollment period, which ended on the day of Jan. 31.


Sherri Ferrell, the chief operating and financial officer for the West Virginia Primary Care Association, claimed this year, many of the issues navigators were reporting were “in the weeds,” and the major issues with enrollment had been cleared up from earlier enrollment periods.


Various navigators noted that the website used to enroll in individual coverage, healthcare.gov, was much improved over last years, but that few still encountered issued. One navigator said that account passwords for healthcare.gov tend to expire between enrollment periods, which could cause issue if too many people fail to reset their passwords on their own and have to call for assistance. Another described the problem of trying to enroll a minor who was not living their family but was not legally emancipated from them.

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