OE9 STARTS MONDAY!
Open Enrollment Year 9 (OE9) starts Monday and AAHD has the resources you need as you assist people with disabilities enroll in health insurance! AAHD is once again working with Community Catalyst and other partners in conducting outreach to educate individuals about the ACA Marketplace. This outreach includes graphics like the one to the right which count down to the start of the upcoming open enrollment. These graphics are available in the Community Catalyst Outreach Hub.
If you’re assisting people with disabilities with enrollment decisions, we want to make sure you have all the resources you need to be able to assist individuals with disabilities as they consider their options on the ACA marketplace. As part of our NDNRC project, AAHD released a Disability Guide which is meant to strengthen disability literacy, help you identify and provide appropriate accommodations and assist you in correctly identifying issues that are central to healthcare insurance for people with disabilities. The disability guide is also available for PDF download.
The NDNRC also has fact sheets which cover a variety of topical areas that are unique to people with disabilities such as rehabilitation and habilitation services and devices, prescription medication benefits, medical supplies and disability etiquette, among others. We also have a set of population specific fact sheets which answers questions on how to assist consumers with various disabilities. All of the NDNRC fact sheets are available on our fact sheets page.
If you missed it last week, CMS announced a series of theme weeks that will occur throughout OE9. This includes one from November 7-13 for Disability Week of Action. Be on the lookout for more details of what we have planned for Disability Week of Action in next week’s newsletter. The entire list of theme weeks can be found in our news item.
Are interested in being a Champion for Coverage? CMS has restarted their Champions for Coverage program which provides weekly updates as OE9 progresses. To learn more or to sign your organization up as a champion, go to CMS’s webpage.
One of the things which has complicated the market recently is the marketing being done by companies which are selling non-ACA compliant plans. The Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) recently released a report using a secret shopper study on the misleading marketing on these health plans, that have continued throughout the COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period. These deceiving sale practices have led consumers to purchasing more expensive insurance plans with limited coverage over marketplace plans, creating an argument for more state and federal protections on behalf on the consumer.
Previously, we highlighted the navigator guide put out by the Georgetown CHIR. In their blog post entitled “What’s New for 2022 Marketplace Enrollment?”, they highlight some of the changes made in their navigator guide due to recent changes in the law.
To celebrate the start of OE9, we’ll be joining Young Invincibles in their OE9 Kickoff Twitter chat. This will happen on Tuesday, November 2 at 3:00 PM ET. To participate, follow along with the hashtag #TodaysVoicesTues or follow the AAHD Twitter account.
If you’re looking for more resources for OE9, Young Invincibles also has an OE9 Materials Folder which includes toolkits in English and Spanish and social media graphics which are continuously updated.
The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) recently published a blog which looks at the savings which have occurred in state-based marketplaces (SBMs) since the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act earlier this year which enhanced the premium tax credits available to consumers.
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.
Archives of our weekly updates are available on the NDNRC website.