AAHD TO SUPPORT COMMUNITY CATALYST OUTREACH PROJECT
AAHD is happy to announce that we are joining with Community Catalyst in a new outreach project for Open Enrollment Year 5 (OE5). Community Catalyst, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is serving as the national coordinating organization for an effort to spread awareness about the upcoming open enrollment period starting November 1st and running through December 15th. To read more about what this project will do, check out our blog post.
This project is in addition to a new partnership we have with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) working on the Consumer Assistance Coordination Hub (CACH). The CACH supports individuals and groups that provide enrollment assistance. To read more about this project, check out that blog post.
As part of the CACH, CBPP has asked the NDNRC to present on its webinar series, Health Reform: Beyond the Basics. In the webinar “Assisting People with Disabilities Enroll in Health Coverage,” we will help you think about what questions a person with a disability needs to think about when they are considering their health care options in the Marketplace. We will also provide an introduction to the resources available through the NDNRC and address disability etiquette and basic accessibility considerations for anyone doing enrollment work. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, October 25, 2017 from 2:00–3:00 PM ET. To register for this webinar or to learn about other webinars from CBPP, check out the CBPP events page.
Yesterday, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) announced an agreement on a bipartisan bill to help stabilize the marketplace. The Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017 would finance payment of the cost-sharing reductions and give states greater flexibility in regulating their own insurance markets. To read more or to download the full text of the bill or the two-page summary released by the Senators, check out our news item. To read more about this bill, check out the blog posts from Health Affairs which were posted on Tuesday and Wednesday.
We continue to monitor the status of health care reform in Congress. You can view the NDNRC statement on health reform which we released after the election last November which includes the provisions of the ACA which we believe are vital to people with disabilities. In the statement entitled “Preserve the Protections Provided by the Affordable Care Act,” we call on Congress and the Administration to protect provisions in the ACA which have benefited people with disabilities.
OE5 is approaching and according to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, there are a large number of individuals who are uninsured or covered by the nongroup market, who are not aware of the dates for the upcoming open enrollment period. Most reported not seeing any advertising regarding the upcoming open enrollment. To learn more about this population and their awareness of open enrollment, check out the poll results from Kaiser.
A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the growth of the Medicaid program. The brief examines the historical trends of both the enrollment numbers of and spending on the Medicaid program and where those numbers are expected to go over the next year. To read more or to download a copy of the issue brief, check out our news item.
Join the NASUAD Disability Business Acumen Center on October 25, 2017 from 12:30-1:30 PM ET as they present a webinar entitled “Planning to Plan? Tools to use to help you better understand your current business environment.” This webinar will be presented by NASUAD along with the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) and will share tools that CBOs can use to collect the information they need to structure a strategic plan designed to help them meet their goals.
Our colleagues at the University of Washington, Healthy Aging Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC) have written a series of Factsheets and Plain Language Research summaries and they have released a plain language summary entitled “People Living with Multiple Sclerosis are Worried About Healthcare Costs.” If you want to learn more about Multiple Sclerosis and how to assist consumers with the condition, you can also check out our population-specific fact sheet entitled “What to Know When Assisting a Consumer with Multiple Sclerosis.”
Are you looking for local partners to help with outreach to the disability community? The NDNRC has Community Outreach Collaboratives (COCs) which work to increase collaborations in the community, dissemination and outreach efforts and enrollment of people with disabilities in the ACA marketplace. You can find a COC, on the COC page of our website.
Archives of our weekly updates are available on the NDNRC website.