OBAMACARESIGN- UPSCRAMBLE
Shortened enrollment period ends; many waited until final week to find coverage
Open enrollment for Obamacare ended at midnight Friday, and residents across Illinois scrambled to meet the deadline.
This year’s enrollment period was about half as long as last year’s, giving consumers just six weeks to select their insurance plan for 2018. In previous years, open enrollment lasted through the end of January.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, by Friday morning, 4.7 million Americans — nearly 170,000 in Illinois — had enrolled in Obamacare since Nov. 1. More than one million waited until the last week to sign up.
GetCovered Illinois, the state’s health care marketplace, has run ads warning consumers of the approaching deadline, but many still waited until the last minute. According to Brian Goreman, director of public education and consumer assurance for GetCovered, the number of Illinois residents who waited until the final week to sign up was 17 percent higher this year than during last year’s open enrollment period.
Across the state, help was available from so- called “navigators” if insurance shoppers needed assistance to find the best plan.
“Sometimes people like to procrastinate and then they can’t figure out the marketplace,” said Sharon Johnson, a certified navigator with the Patient Innovation Center. Johnson was one of three navigators offering walk- in hours at the Thompson Center Friday.
One common problem, said Johnson, is that consumers are unable to access the email address connected to their healthcare. gov account, or answer their security questions.
Zachery Martin, 49, came to the Thompson Center for help about eight hours before the midnight Friday deadline. Martin said he enrolled by himself last year, but this year he had trouble connecting his email and accessing thewebsite, and felt pressure from the shorter enrollment period.
“Trying to do it online myself was a joke,” said Martin, “I tried on my PC and I tried onmy phone, but the website just kept crashing.”
Luckily, Johnson was able to help, and Martin enrolled on time.
“I now have insurance, and it’s a plan I can afford,” Martin said with a smile.
For other shoppers, logging into the marketplace and applying is easy, but finding an affordable plan gets tricky.
“A lot of people can navigate the site on their own, but then can’t find a plan with a premium [ monthly payment] that fits in their budget,” said Johnson.
On deadline day, Johnson said she helped more than 25 people; she expected her phone to be “ringing all night.”
Syuzanna Bradford, enrollment coordinator at the Patient Innovation Center, said navigators felt the pressure of changes made by the Trump administration.
In addition to a shorter enrollment period, the administration announced in August that funding for navigators would be cut around 40 percent, and the advertising budget for enrollment information would be cut from $ 100 million to $ 10 million.
“BECAUSE OF THE SHORTER ENROLLMENT TIME, WE JUST HAVEN’T HAD THE CAPACITY TO HELP EVERYONE.” SYUZANNA BRADFORD, enrollment coordinator at the Patient Innovation Center
“It’s been different this year, we have had people calling us non- stop,” she said, adding that the Thompson Center was fully staffed with navigators Monday through Friday but still couldn’t meet the higher demand.
“All our navigators have been booked and couldn’t take any more walk- ins,” Bradford said Friday. “Because of the shorter enrollment time, we just haven’t had the capacity to help everyone.”
Earlier this year, the Illinois Department of Insurance hosted an outreach program, bringing navigators to all 102 counties. According to the department, more than 350,000 Illinois residents enrolled through the marketplace for 2017.