OE5 STARTS WEDNESDAY
Open Enrollment Year 5 (OE5) will start on Wednesday, November 1. The dates for open enrollment this year are different than they were in prior years as OE5 will end on December 15, 2017. These dates apply for marketplaces on the federally facilitated exchange (healthcare.gov). Some states who are running their own state-based marketplace will have an extended period for OE5. For a complete rundown of the dates for open enrollment in the state-based marketplaces, check out our blog post.
In advance of open enrollment, there are some new resources available to help you. Check out our news item from this week to learn about resources from the new initiative Get America Covered and the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR).
In case you missed it, AAHD is partnering with organizations on two separate projects to assist with OE5. The first is a project with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) called the Consumer Assistance Coordination Hub (CACH). The CACH supports individuals and groups that provide enrollment assistance. The second project is with Community Catalyst and is an effort to spread awareness about the upcoming open enrollment period. If you want to read more about these projects, you can check out our blog.
As part of the CACH project, CBPP asked the NDNRC to present on its webinar series, Health Reform: Beyond the Basics. This webinar was conducted this past Wednesday and both the slides and video from the webinar have now been archived. These links are also available on the “Webinars/Presentations” page of our website.
Last week, we reported on an agreement between Senators Alexander and Murray on a new bipartisan bill aimed at stabilizing the marketplace. This week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017. To learn more about the CBO score or to download a copy, check out our news item. If you want to read more about the CBO score, you can also check out the blog post from Health Affairs.
Since the introduction of the Alexander-Murray bill, there has been a lot of discussion about whether President Trump and other Republicans will support the proposal with some saying that additional concessions will need to be made on key ACA provisions such as repealing the individual mandate. The CHIR has a blog post this week which examines this issue.
We continue to monitor the status of Alexander-Murray and other health care reform efforts 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.
The University of Washington, Healthy Aging & Physical Disability, Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC) has released a new plain language summary entitled “How to Sidestep Chronic Health Problems as you Age.”
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.