City wins Obamacare challenge
President to visit as reward for higher enrollment
Milwaukee won the White House’s Healthy Communities Challenge, a contest among 20 cities to enroll people in health plans sold on the marketplaces set up through the Affordable Care Act, the White House announced Friday.
President Barack Obama promised to visit the city that won the challenge.
At the end of the third open-enrollment period, 89,480 people in the Milwaukee area had bought a health plan on the federal marketplace, a 72% increase from 52,115 people at the end of the open-enrollment period last year.
“We were really building on three years of working together,” said Clare Reardon of the Milwaukee Enrollment Network, a coalition created to help people sign up for coverage.
The coalition includes health systems, health departments, community health centers and organizations such as Covering Wisconsin, which had a federal grant to help people sign up for coverage.
A dozen political and health care leaders gathered around a speakerphone in Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s office Friday morning to hear the news from Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff.
They included Chris Abele, Milwaukee County executive; U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.); Bevan Baker, commissioner of the Milwaukee Health Department; and Hector Colón, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services.
In a statement, Obama congratulated Milwaukee and the other competing cities “for their passion and innovation in finding ways to make sure they and their neighbors could get the health care and peace of mind that they deserve. That’s what the Affordable Care Act is all about.”
The other cities with the highest ratios of new people enrolled in health plans sold on the marketplace compared to the number of uninsured people eligible for those plans were Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Oakland.
Barrett touted the Milwaukee effort.
“This is about two things,” hesaid. “It’s about making sure that Americans have health care. And equally compelling, it’s much more efficient than having people go to the emergency room.”
Statewide, 239,034 people signed up for coverage, a16% increase from 205,839 people at the same point last year.
The increases for Milwaukee and Wisconsin outpaced the average for the country.
Nationally, 12.7 million people enrolled in health plans sold on the federal or state marketplaces, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That’s an 11% increase from the roughly 11.4 million people who bought or were reenrolled in the plans at the end of the open-enrollment period last year.