Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Compared to existing small group quoting and enrollment systems from the insurers and the Cal Choice private exchange, the Covered California SHOP program seems a little clunky and unfinished. If an employer wants to realize the tax credits for contributing to employee health insurance premiums they have to have a small group plan through Covered California. Except for the option to purchase pediatric dental plans for dependent children, SHOP offers no adult dental or vision insurance.
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones continues to wage not only a regulatory turf battle with Covered California over the issue of policy cancellations, he is also waging a war of words. No sooner had the California Health Benefits Board voted to continue with the planned cancellation of health plans for December 31st, Commissioner Jones fired off a press release to announce how unhappy he was at the Board of Covered California.
So many words have been spoken and written about the Affordable Care Act there is hardly an angle that hasn’t been touched. Obamacare101 podcast produced by Staci Joy is a well balanced presentation that features several different Californians that are touched by the ACA and Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace. Just like the ACA itself is controversial, some of the sincere comments by those recorded for the Obamacare101 podcast may leave one thinking, “Did he just say that?”
The enrollment of individuals and families under the expanded Medicaid provisions of the ACA is not a slam dunk with either the mailing in of an application or clicking “enroll” on a website. A variety of documents will usually need to be sent to complete the enrollment at the county level. Not submitting the verification documents could ultimately delay enrollment for people who desperately need the insurance.
Within the contract that all insurance companies had to sign to offer health plans through Covered California was the stipulation that the “contractor” (aka insurance company or health plan) cancel all outstanding policies that didn’t comply with the ACA by December 31, 2013.
Thousands of health insurance agents across California have done what Covered California has asked us to do to become certified to sell their new health plans. Unfortunately, Covered California has not held up their end of the agreement by creating an agent system within the CalHEERS website that allows us to monitor the progress of an application or to know if we will ever get paid. I am now leaning toward taking my client business right to the carriers and boycotting Covered California altogether.
So I bit the bullet and attended a local community presentation by a volunteer from a Certified Educator for CoveredCA adding to the information I had recently researched online. After the talk, I conferred with the presenter who was a volunteer through Sacramento Mighty Oaks and stated my concerns about my situation. She was wonderful, gladly offering to be in touch with me with answers in the days that followed.
The California Endowment teamed up with the Service Employees International Union- United Healthcare Worker West to host a “We Connect” event at the Sacramento Convention Center to enroll local residents in new Covered California Affordable Care Act health plans. While the production of the event was fairly glossy and festive, like many aspects of enrolling in the new ACA plans through Covered California there were many frustrations and challenges for attendees and volunteers
From problems with logging in, bad and missing information to the virtually inoperable agent dashboard, the Covered California web portal to enroll in new ACA health plans has serious issues that no one at the California Health Benefits Exchange wants to address openly.
From the sloppy training, poorly designed and broken website, lack of real information about plans to the patronizing pep talk tone of the webinars, I’m just about done with Covered California. If I didn’t feel so strongly about health care reform and the importance of the Affordable Care Act I would have cut my ties with Covered California long ago and just concentrated on keeping my current clients with their current carriers.
