NEW REPORT ON CONSUMER ASSISTANCE IN HEALTH INSURANCE ENROLLMENT
Note: through the summer months, we will be sending the NDNRC Update every other Friday.
Throughout last year’s open enrollment and the first part of this year, we’ve been involved in two projects promoting ACA enrollment – the Community Catalyst outreach project and the Consumer Assistance Coordination Hub (CACH) run by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). With the assistance of CBPP, Community Catalyst has just released a new report which looks at the importance of consumer assistance programs in the ACA marketplace and enrollment process. To learn more about this report or to download a copy, check out our news item.
Previously, we highlighted the blog posts from the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) on comments made by various groups to the proposed rules on Association Health Plans and the effect they could have on the individual marketplace. Now, the CHIR has started a new series of blog posts summarizing comments on the proposed rules for short-term, limited duration health plans. The first two of these blog posts are on comments made by consumer advocates and major medical insurers.
If you missed it last month, we highlighted a new fact sheet on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and disability from the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas. The fact sheet answers questions like “What is the ACA?”; “Why is the ACA important to me?”; and “How can I use the ACA to make my life better?” We’ve also just added it to our Resources & Links Page under “Enrollment Resources – Disability Specific.”
In February, we published a blog post which captures all the news and resources on the waivers where states are adding work requirements to their Medicaid programs. This week we added two new posts from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) entitled “Proposed Medicaid Eligibility Restrictions Have Costly Unintended Consequences” and “Medicaid Waiver Proposals Creating New Barriers to Coverage, Will Cost States Millions.” Last month we also added a communications toolkit from Community Catalyst entitled “Medicaid Makes the Difference” which provides advocates with messaging on the harm that could come from work requirements and other proposed changes to the Medicaid program.
Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Eligibility Determinations and Enrollment Report from March 2018. This report can also be found on our Resources & Links page under “Enrollment Statistics.” Prior Medicaid enrollment reports from CMS, are archived on our website.
If you missed it last month, be sure to check out our new initiative – doing education and outreach to the disability community about the NIH’s All of Us Research Project.
The University of Washington Healthy Aging Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC) has released a plain language summary entitled “Using Technology to Gather Health Information in the Home and Community Life of People Aging with Disabilities.”
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.