San Antonio city officials and the area’s largest nonprofit health plan have launched separate websites to help residents understand the federally run health insurance marketplace opening Tuesday. The Affordable Care Act requires most people to have health insurance coverage in 2014.
The city’s web page can be found at sanantonio.gov/metro-health/AffordableCareAct.aspx.
It is geared toward small-business employees and owners, freelancers, independent workers and unemployed residents without health insurance. It is intended to help those seeking information about the insurance marketplace.
The page offers a basic outline about the Affordable Care Act, explains what type of medical services must be covered by health insurance plans and describes who is eligible for reduced premiums through the marketplace.
There’s a link to this, with the Enroll SA graphic, on the San Antonio city government homepage. So far at least I don’t see anything like it for other cities such as Houston, Dallas, or Austin. However, on the Texas Organizing Project’s Health Insurance Marketplace page, which has a lot of useful exchange-related information, there are local addresses in Houston, Dallas, and the Valley. Lord knows, the state isn’t going to do anything to help the people who can now get coverage under the Affordable Care Act – indeed, the state is doing everything it can to keep them from knowing about the exchanges – so it’s up to the cities to pick up the slack. San Antonio is showing how it’s done. Kudos to them for it.