Obamacare enrollment up by 42 percent

With 10 days remaining in the open enrollment period, the number of Georgians signing up for health insurance on the Obamacare website has zoomed by 42 percent this year over last.

As of Tuesday, 449,000 people had selected plans on healthcare.gov, up from 317,000 last year.

“That’s pretty high, especially when the enrollment period last year was twice as long,” said Dante McKay, director of the Georgia division of Enroll America. Open enrollment last year ran from Oct. 1, 2013, through March 31, 2014 (extended to April 19 for some); this year it began Nov. 15 and closes Feb. 15.

Enroll America promotes Obamacare’s Health Insurance Marketplace, where people who aren’t covered at work may purchase individual insurance policies; most qualify for federal tax credits that help pay for the insurance. The marketplace website was a technical nightmare in its debut in 2013, chasing away more people than it actually enrolled in its earliest days. This time the site has signed up 132,000 more people in less than half the time.

“That number’s pretty good,” said Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reforms at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Georgia ranks near the top 10 among the states for the share of the potential marketplace population it has enrolled, Tolbert said.

The 449,000 number reflects people who completed the process and selected a plan. The number who actually end up paying for a policy will be somewhat less.

'I feel wonderful. I’m very happy to have it.'

The best indication of how the state might be faring is another number from HHS that suggests that 43 percent of the buyers in Georgia, as of Jan. 16, were new to the marketplace.

Marilyn Johnson of Clarkston is one of Georgia’s new enrollees.

Johnson said she hadn’t even explored the marketplace during last year’s enrollment because “I thought it was going to be too expensive.”

She later went to an information session at a local library and found that she probably could afford it after all. Johnson found a plan that met her budget and was also able to buy a dental coverage.

As a “naturopath,” a specialist in holistic medicine and nutrition, Johnson doesn’t often use “traditional medicine,” she said. But she is happy to have insurance in case of a catastrophic diagnosis.

“I feel wonderful,” she said. “I’m very happy to have it.”

'They've heard negative things about it'

Johnson’s experience illustrates a challenge that navigators and others who help enroll consumers face. Many people think they cannot afford insurance and are not aware of subsidies, which last year were available to almost 90 percent of Georgians who enrolled in the marketplace.

Also, some consumers do not back Obamacare and therefore avoid enrolling — until they learn that it can help them, said Ben Thomases, executive vice president for programs at Seedco, one of two non-profits that operate “navigator” programs in Georgia. Navigators are trained to help consumers work their way through the enrollment process..

“Part of the role we play is talking to people who are opposed to Obamacare,” Thomases said. “They’ve heard negative things about it, but they need insurance.”

Seedco navigators aim to give information as completely and neutrally as possible, he said.

“We are not a political organization, and that’s not our goal. We just try to get the information out there, and context is important. We’re providing information at trusted, local institutions, so there’s credibility, and face-to-face interaction.”

Those information sessions are in the past for this open enrollment, which ends Feb. 15.

“Outreach is over; we really want to provide enrollment assistance these last few weeks. People really need to know the deadline is earlier, and that there will be a penalty,” Thomases said. “We just wanted to get everybody enrolled.”

'We heard every excuse'

Fred Ammons, CEO of Community Health Works, the second nonprofit that hires navigators for enrollment, said his group was hampered somewhat by a delay in getting its 20 navigators licensed.

The problem appeared to be due to bureaucratic red tape between the insurance commissioner’s office and a contractor hired to help the commission license the navigators, Ammons said.

He said he did not want to believe the problem was political — a navigation program operated by the University of Georgia was shuttered in August — but that “it was well into December” before the problems were corrected.

“We heard every excuse, every whatever, but it finally got done,” he said.