Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Johnny snapped a picture of his driver’s license on his knee while driving his VW micro bus through Weed on I-5 traveling to a gig in Ashland, Oregon. Johnny then emailed the picture of “verification document” for me to upload to his online application for health insurance.
One of the biggest questions I get is, “When will Covered California send me a bill for the health insurance?” Unfortunately, Covered California doesn’t invoice for the health insurance, that is left up to the insurance companies. If your application has been successfully transmitted to the insurance company you can make your first premium payment over the phone. Some applications have not, and may never, actually make it to your selected insurance company.
Applications submitted to Covered California in October and November are missing agent designations and have corrupted household information when received by one of the insurance companies. It is hard to know if these data corruptions are an aberration or if the problem may be more widespread in the Covered California system. The bottom line is that these individuals have received no billing information from the carrier and the agent is not the broker of record.
Covered California announced a marketing campaign aimed at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities to encourage them to enroll in new ACA health plans through the exchange. The print media and billboard advertising is in addition to grants to LGBT organizations to provide outreach and education.
Covered California has estimated that nearly 100,000 households have started an application but have not selected a health plan. To help “Jump Start” these stalled applications Covered California will be distributing the contact information of these stalled applications to Certified Agents to call the applicants and offer assistance to help them make a health plan selection for an effective date of January 1, 2014.
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.
