Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to the Covered California application, consumer account, estimating income, household size, monthly subsidies, health plans, Medi-Cal, and terminations.
The eligibility requirements to receive premium assistance for the new ACA health plans offered through either the federal or state websites is based on a household’s estimated income in 2014. Past federal tax returns are a great starting point and guide, but an individual or family’s wages may have significantly changed in 2013 and may change again in 2014.
As if Covered California doesn’t have enough to do with fixing website problems, enrolling Certified Enrollment Counselors and certifying insurance agents to sell their health plans, they now have to launch a $5 million grant program to create regional Navigators. It is unfortunate that the rules associated with the Affordable Care Act mandate that states that set up their own exchanges must also create a Navigator program that looks virtually identical to the fledgling Certified Enrollment Entities and Counselors In-Person Assistance Program.
Many Californians are seeing their individual and family health insurance premiums jump with the inclusion of all the new Affordable Care Act benefits and regulations. A small sampling of the new ACA rates shows that Covered California individual health plans are comparably priced with current and future small group plans offered in California.
I used to repair old mechanical clocks so I got used to being frustrated when a 100 year time piece wouldn’t keep proper time or chime on the hour. None of us expected that we would have to tinker with the internal settings of our web browsers just to get the Covered California website to work properly. But here we, trouble shooting modern day web portals like they were antique clocks that don’t keep time.
Agents that are certified to sell Covered California health insurance sign an agreement which in part states that the agent will fairly represent all the different plans. I have faith that all the agents will accurately represent all the plans, but they are under various incentives and realities that may distort some agent’s presentations to clients.
Designating an agent to help you enroll in a new individual and family plan or a small group plan offered through Covered California is pretty simple. Not only can the agent help with the application when he or she is your designated agent, a health insurance agent also provides another level of customer service for future changes.
As a health insurance agent, as a human being, all I want to do is help people. All I want to do is help people enroll in Covered California. After fighting with Internet Explorer 10.0 to actually work with the CalHEERS site, more road blocks from a system that isn’t ready for prime time continues […]
Having problems finding someone to help you with you Covered California enrollment? You’re not alone. The second week into open enrollment shows that Covered California is struggling to get bodies trained and certified to help enroll Californians in the new health plans. After hoping to have an army of In-Person Assisters to help Californians, there were less than 300 Certified Enrollment Counselors (CEC) according to figures released by Covered California.
CoveredCa.com website went from accessible to impenetrable last week for many consumers and agents. Just recently I learned that the problem stems from issues with both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer web browsers. I can confirm this since the stall in the login occurs with both web browsers as of the writing of this blog post, October 14th. Oddly, I was able to login on my iPad. Unfortunately, the Safari web browser on my iMac won’t correctly connect to Covered California.
Under the Affordable Care Act, individual and family plans (IFPs) will have coverage benefits very much like an employer sponsored small group plan. Another way in which the new IFP plans will mirror a group plan are enrollment restrictions. Individuals and families will only be able to enroll into the new IFP plans outside of open enrollment if there is a “qualifying event”.
