Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts on the development and implementation of the California health insurance market place, application, account, enrollment, termination.
In response to high call volume for assistance and a website that has gotten slow and started crash at times, Covered California issued and Agent Alert notifying Certified Insurance Agents that they were extending the deadline for 2015 renewals and enrollment until December 21, 2014. URGENT! You Have Extra Time to Help Consumers Complete Enrollment for January 1st! […]
What’s the difference between a Covered California enrollment for a subsidized private plan and Medi-Cal? Nothing when assisted by a Certified Insurance Agent. A Medi-Cal enrollment takes just as much knowledge, experience and time to perform for an agent as an enrollment for a private plan through Covered California. Yet, a Medi-Cal enrollment only yields […]
The latest error code in the Covered California enrollment system to stymie consumers occurs while attempting to change the health plan. My experience has been that if a consumer has been automatically enrolled in their current 2014 health plan for 2015, the CalHEERS program will not allow a plan change. Error Code: 224 pops up […]
In recent weeks I’ve been contacted by several consumers who found out they had been enrolled in Medi-Cal while receiving, and still paying, for their subsidized private health insurance through Covered California. Aside from the obvious question of how could this happen, is the reality that Covered California may have been advancing tax credits to private health […]
Multi-State health plans offered in most states limit coverage for abortions to what is considered therapeutic or non-excepted abortions. Abortions will only be covered under the Multi-State Plans (MSP) in the cases of harm to the mother’s health or conception as a result of rape or incest. Elective abortions are not a covered benefit under MSPs. Multi-State […]
The Covered California sales seminar for 2015 open enrollment held on December 3rd covered numerous topics. While new sales collateral, store front signage and immigration updates were covered, the bulk of the webinar was devoted to tips, tricks and more work-a-round solutions for enrollment system glitches. The last part of the seminar was a 16 […]
While Covered California was preparing a large press announcement with the California Medical Association (CMA) about extolling the number of physicians that are participating in Covered California individual and family health plans, Health Net was releasing their list of providers in their new narrow network Exclusive Provider Organizations (EPO) and Health Service Plans (HSP). A search […]
Covered California presented a short seminar and long video about the updates and changes to the CalHEERS online enrollment system. The presentation should have been entitled Bugs and Workarounds because there are more known issues than anyone at Covered California is willing to admit with the program. The breadth of the issues and challenges with […]
Covered California released several Job Aids or technical summaries related to ACA open enrollment for 2015. The guides cover a variety of different consumer situations from changing plans, making the initial binder payment, and the overall functionality of the CalHEERS online enrollment system. Some of the functions can only be performed by certain certified agents, counselors or […]
One of the confusing aspects of the Affordable Care Act is the interchangeable tax terms people use when defining a household. The federal and state exchanges use the terms children or dependents when describing members of a household. The IRS uses the more accurate, but confusing terminology, of personal exemptions as the true test for […]
