Enroll America, a group created to help enroll people in health insurance under Obamacare, announced Thursday that it is expanding into Alabama, Illinois and South Carolina for the third sign-up season beginning next month.
The group says it will have staff in 14 states where large numbers of uninsured consumers persist. It also announced that it is partnering with 6,700 organizations around the country to help reach people within their own communities with information about the new coverage opportunities available to them under the Affordable Care Act.
The ramp-up comes in advance of an enrollment season that administration officials say could be the most challenging yet. While about 9.9 million Americans signed up and paid for coverage in the new insurance marketplaces last year, many of the remaining uninsured will be the hardest to reach because they have resisted signing up through two enrollment periods.
“Our goal in year three is to identify the remaining obstacles for consumers to enroll in or renew their coverage, and take action to address those challenges,” said Enroll America President Anne Filipic.
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“We’ll bring our successful model to the communities that need it most, we’ll launch a cutting-edge digital tool to help consumers quickly understand what complicated insurance terms mean for their bottom line, and we’ll train partners to incorporate what we’ve learned into their programs so we can institutionalize the science of enrollment across the country,” she said.
Enroll America is starting a new kind of enrollment tool this year, in hopes of helping consumers better understand which health plan would be right for them, a nod to the continuing difficulties many consumers have in discerning what different plans cover and what costs they would incur.
The web-based tool will help consumers compare plans being sold on the marketplaces in their state by giving them a personalized estimate of their healthcare costs for the year and indicating whether their prescription drugs and preferred doctors are covered, based on questions about the user and their health status.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it expects 10 million people to sign up for Obamacare coverage during the enrollment season that starts Nov. 1, a slim increase over the number of sign-ups last year.
