Obamacare nonprofits tasked with signing up new insurance customers are up against the wall now that the Trump administration has cut funding by 70 percent.
Nonprofits called “navigators” are debating how to continue outreach under the cuts announced earlier this week. The administration will provide $10 million in navigator funding for the 2019 coverage year, compared to $34 million for 2018.
For some, the cuts will likely mean less personal help for people trying to sign up. The CEO of Georgia-based navigator Community Health Works, Fred Ammons, told NPR that the cuts from last year of nearly 40 percent have already caused the navigator to look for ways to do more with less.
“It will mean that face-to-face, in person navigation as it has been performed in the past is essentially over,” he said. “That is going to become the exception rather than the norm.”
The Trump administration said this week that the funding cuts were appropriate because navigators did not sign up enough people during the 2018 open enrollment. But navigators say that the funding cuts don’t fully take into account their mandate under Obamacare to help people select insurance.
“We’re talking about pitting one population against another,” said Jodi Ray, executive director of the navigator Florida Covering Kids & Families. “Do we look at what’s easiest to get the most numbers of enrollments, or do we concentrate on those who are the most time-consuming to assist?”
Kuznia said that the funding cuts put navigators in a “pretty terrible” position.
“This also does not take into account all the types of assistance navigators provide all year, such as helping with complex cases and issues and filing appeals,” she said. “Florida will definitely be hit hard by this.”
Navigators argue that they are mandated under Obamacare to provide other types of outreach, such as helping a customer determine whether a plan covers their doctor in the network.
But the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services charged that the investment was not worth it.
During the 2018 open enrollment, navigators got $36 million in federal grants but enrolled less than 1 percent of the entire enrollment for the 34 federally run Obamacare insurance exchanges.
The agency said that if funding for navigators disappears, it wants to put more emphasis on insurance agents and brokers.
“To save federal dollars and provide more tailored opportunities for consumers to shop for coverage, CMS continues to expand options for individuals to enroll through the private sector, including online and in-person agents and brokers as well as enrolling directly with health insurers,” the agency said in a release earlier this week.
The steep cutback will force navigators to figure out how to divvy up whatever funding remains, with some speculating they will not apply for federal grants at all.
The Utah Health Policy Project may not apply for the navigator grants, Executive Director Matt Slonaker told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“We’re down to the bare minimum amount,” he said.
