ACA TURNS 5! IS IT WORKING?

This week marked the five year anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law and some new reports show how well the ACA is working. First, the White House released a report entitled “Accomplishments of the Affordable Care Act.” This report goes beyond just the enrollment numbers in the market place but also highlights additional consumer protections which are especially important for people with disabilities. The full report can be downloaded in our news item here.

The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) also released two reports on the effect of Medicaid expansion. The first was on the economic impact of Medicaid Expansion in states where it was expanded verses those where it was not and the second was on the effect Medicaid expansion had on the amount of uncompensated care provided by hospitals to patients without coverage again comparing states where Medicaid has been expanded verses where it was not. Both of these reports are available in our news item, here. For additional info on Medicaid Expansion and the impact it could have in states here it hasn’t been expanded, be sure to check out the infographic from Families USA here.

In addition to those reports, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also released the Eligibility Determinations and Enrollment Report for Medicaid from January 2015. To read our news item, which includes a link to the report from CMS, click here. The report can also be found on our Resources & Links page under “Enrollment Statistics.”

In case you missed it last week, we released five new state specific fact sheets for New York written by our NY COC, the Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY (CIDNY). These five fact sheets are:

• Fact Sheet #2 – Getting and Using Health Plan Member Handbook, Policy, or Contract
• Fact Sheet #3 – Using Health Plan Customer Services to Learn Scope of Coverage
• Fact Sheet #12 – Process for Medicaid Eligibility
• Fact Sheet #15 – Medicaid Buy-In for Working People with Disabilities
• Fact Sheet #16 – Tips for ACA Enrollees: From Coverage to Care – Persons with Disabilities

All the New York specific fact sheets can also be found on our New York page under “State Specific Fact Sheets” by clicking here, and as always, the entire list of non-state specific fact sheets is available here.

Are you looking for local partners to help with outreach to the disability community? The NDNRC has funded eleven Community Outreach Collaboratives (COCs) for the second year of enrollment. The COCs will increase collaborations in the community, dissemination and outreach efforts and enrollment of people with disabilities in the ACA. To find a COC, click here.

Weekly updates are now archived on the NDNRC site. All Weekly Updates since October 3, 2014 can be accessed by clicking here.