One-Fifth of New Enrollees Under Health Care Law Fail to Pay First Premium, Feb. 13, New York Times.
In the above article, the AP discusses enrollment numbers of
the new health care law, claiming one-fifth of those who enrolled in the
individual health care failed to pay their first-month's premium. This
failure, it was discussed, could be attributed to many factors such as
receiving late statements, failure to send statements, failure of
clients to log back into the portal and accept or deny their insurance,
and of course lack of ability to pay.
After reporting this staggering number, it raises so many
questions from a social work standpoint. What, in fact, is the primary
reasoning behind this huge lack of coverage payment? Is there a way to
canvas those states and areas with the highest rate of non-payment, and
intervene? I feel as though this is a quintessential macro-level
practice undertaking. And I assume (which I realize I should never do!)
that there are teams doing just that. It definitely makes me question
my assigned "place" of Lemay, wondering what the success rate of not
only enrolling in the new health care, but ability for payment. Has
anyone heard about St. Louis' success in this?Another interesting tid-bit of this article was in the last paragraph: it stated that the government had not finished building the "back end" of the system, which is needed to actually pay the insurers... So maybe none of them have actually gotten paid? (A bit of humor..)
The new health insurance system saved us from bankruptcy. I know it sounds dramatic but its true. I was admitted to the hospital with blood clots while 3 months pregnant. I have been able to get the care I have and will need for my high risk pregnancy...specialists, extra ultrasounds/tests, and very expensive medication.
ReplyDeleteGetting this insurance was a nightmare and I almost gave up many times out of frustration. We all know about the website problems...I applied via the phone and they messed up my data. After January 1st, Anthem's customer service line shut down from high call volume...if you got through you were placed on hold for hours. I went through all of our cell phone minutes in less than a week. They took weeks to mail me my id cards. They sent a letter requiring 2 more months premiums in advance and they changed the payment address.
I can imagine all of those issues affecting enrollment and paying premiums...its hard to pay a premium when you can't get a hold of someone to give the payment to. I am very very very thankful for the insurance but really feel like the roll out and follow up was a complete disaster. I will call, advocate, and annoy on my behalf...a lot of people don't know how/don't have access to do that.