OE9 IS 10 DAYS AWAY!

Open Enrollment Year 9 (OE9) is just over a week away and CMS has announced a series of theme weeks that will occur throughout OE9. This includes one from November 7-13 for Disability Week of Action. The entire list of theme weeks can be found in our news item.

With the start of OE9 10 days away, we have resources to help you with your outreach. AAHD has a project with Community Catalyst in conducting outreach to educate individuals about health insurance enrollment through the ACA Marketplace and Medicaid. This outreach includes graphics like the one above which count down to the start of OE9. These graphics are available in the Community Catalyst Outreach Hub.

Are you working with someone who still needs health insurance coverage? While the COVID SEP did end for the federally facilitated marketplace, there are some state-based marketplaces (SBMs) which are still running a COVID SEP. You can find out what SBMs still have a COVID SEP by checking out our blog post.

Over the past several weeks, we have been highlighting the “Beyond the Basics” webinar series from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) which provides technical assistance to navigators and other health insurance enrollment assisters on best practices for assisting consumers as they enroll in health care insurance. This included our webinar last week entitled “Best Practices When Assisting People with Disabilities Enroll in Health Coverage”. All nine webinars in this series have now been archived. You can access the video recordings and slides for all of them in our news item.

In addition to the CBPP webinar series, CMS has released a series of assister training modules. The topics and links for these modules can be found in our news item.

A report from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families examines a Kaiser Family Foundation survey on Medicaid and CHIP which noted the importance of coverage for low-income children with disabilities and their families. The survey found that almost half of children with special needs use Medicaid/CHIP and experience increased health needs.

The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families has done an analysis on the Biden administration’s decision to extend continuous Medicaid coverage to January 2022 due to the pandemic. States will continue to have increased funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), with a 60-day notice when the public health emergency is no longer in effect so that beneficiaries can find alternative health insurance plans before their coverage ends.

A new blog post from the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) examines what marketplaces can do to address some of the potential coverage losses at the conclusion of the public health emergency.

Did you know that October was Health Literacy Month? CMS has resources to help consumers understand better how to utilize their health coverage. These can be found on the CMS Coverage to Care webpage and they are also available in Spanish. Included in these resources is a brochure: “Getting the Care You Need: A Guide for People with Disabilities.” This resource is also available in Arabic, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Archives of our weekly updates are available on the NDNRC website.