Making sure people who apply for Commonwealth Care are able to get and keep their coverage was on the minds of outreach workers at the Western Massachusetts HAN meeting in April, which featured a presentation by the Director of Commonwealth Care, Melissa Boudreault.
Key announcements from the April 4, 2008 meeting of the Western Health Access Network in Amherst, MA
Our last Boston HAN meeting came in the wake of the Connector Board’s decisions to shift more of the costs of Health Care Reform to consumers by raising co-pays and premiums for Commonwealth Care. Advocates continue to oppose these cost increases and push for sharing the costs more evenly with businesses. Meanwhile, outreach and enrollment workers are seeing an increase in administrative barriers to enrollment in Commonwealth Care and MassHealth.
Further notes from information presented by Georgia Maheras, Staff Attorney, Health Law Advocates, at our Health Access Network meeting in Boston, MA – March 27, 2008
As I carefully placed a paper cup full of coffee on the note-taking table, a stream of people both familiar & new passed by the pastry table and settled in for our March 7 Western Health Access Network Meeting. Nearly every chair in the circle was full with HAN members who had driven to Amherst from as far as Leominster and Great Barrington to share enrollment concerns and have a discussion about estate recovery rules (PDF).
Outreach workers do the hard work of explaining policy changes to real people, so often they are among the first to hear feedback about how they are working. Not surprisingly, this was a theme of the Western Mass. Health Access Network meeting this February, when we gathered with outreach and enrollment workers from Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden counties. HAN members doing enrollment agreed that there is still confusion and frustration in their communities.
December was intense... this is the 'take-away' from our Health Access Network meetings in Amherst and Boston this month. Across the board, people providing enrollment assistance in hospitals, community health centers and community organizations were faced with a huge number of people trying to get health insurance coverage before the Dec. 31 deadline. John Bergeron from Hilltowns Community Health Center got the prize for the latest request for assistance; he received several phone messages on the evening of December 31 from people looking to comply with the mandate.
An archive of past HAN meeting notes - from January 2005 to February 2008 - available in PDF format. Files are approximately 100-200 KB in size. We began blogging our HAN meetings in 2008 and phased out the previous format posted here.
