It’s constitutional – deal with it
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services Wednesday announced nearly 860,000 Texans so far have enrolled in health insurance marketplace coverage with a month left still left to go until the 2015 open enrollment period ends.
It’s unclear how many of those signups are new marketplace customers. Last year, nearly 734,000 Texans, many of whom had never been insured, signed up for coverage. About 198,000 of them were in the Houston area.
“As of Jan. 9, 859,377 Texans have access to quality, affordable health coverage for 2015 through the Health Insurance Marketplace,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell in a written statement.
Good to hear. National enrollments have been strong as well. It seems eminently reasonable to me that Texas could top one million signups by February 15, given the likelihood (as was the case last year) of some number of people waiting till the last minute to get it done.
There’s also an intensified focus on the Latino community.
Officials plan more than 600 enrollment events nationwide, including a few in the Houston area, that target Hispanics in an effort to get more signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. In the meantime, grass-roots organizations and the Department of Health and Human Services are spreading the word about the marketplace by using webinars, Twitter, advertising and Spanish television telethons.
“We’re doubling down,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told reporters Wednesday, noting that the agency has dedicated a third of its advertising budget to Spanish speakers. “The Latino community is one of the fastest growing communities in the country. We’re specifically focused on this community because of the health disparities that exist for them and we think having insurance will help.”
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Researchers have found Texas Latinos were more than twice as likely as Anglos to enroll in marketplace coverage. They also discovered Hispanic adults in Texas have more difficulty affording health care and are three times as likely to be uninsured.
Burwell repeatedly has said Spanish speakers would be targeted for more outreach this enrollment period. Insurers and enrollment organization trained more application assisters to accommodate Latino applicants and marketplace officials simplified the insurance application process, expanded the number of documents people could use to verify their identities and income and made it easier for applicants to use hyphenated names, which are common in Latino communities.
“We’re working to meet Latino consumers where they are, whether that’s online, over the phone or in person,” Burwell said.
There’s a lot of potential there, and one thing we learned from the first round of enrollments was precisely that these customers needed more engagement to get signed up. I hope this has the desired effect, and that we can learn more for the next time.
What would happen to all these people if SCOTUS takes the opportunity to gut subsidies for the national exchange? My guess is that as are the million or so folks that would qualify for Medicaid under a normal expansion plan, they’d be SOL. Oh, I’m sure that Rep. John Zerwas will put forth a bill to create a Texas state exchange, as he has done before. He’ll have the support of all the Dems, a few honorable Republicans, every non-crazy local official, and the business establishment, but it won’t be enough. Nothing will change till we start to win more elections. I wish I had a sunnier outlook than that, but I don’t. Sorry.