The economic downturn shaped a lot of our discussion – how it affects clients, state services, and our own organizations. For example, more clients find themselves in tears during appointments – some with problems like home foreclosure that outreach workers just can’t help fix. Many HAN organizations are taking on additional responsibilities with fewer staff. CP has also cut back staffing; we are now closed on Wednesdays.
"Outreach & enrollment" means much more than putting up posters and helping people fill out MassHealth applications. Recently, over the course of a two hour appointment, my supervisor and I counseled one household on eleven different public health insurance, subsidy and care programs. We helped them file four separate applications to five different insurance programs, putting together a patchwork of care options to cover the hole left by the loss of employer-sponsored insurance.
Our June 6 Western HAN meeting was an opportunity to step back and reflect on the next steps toward universal coverage in Massachusetts.
This month, outreach workers gave some powerful examples of how the Commonwealth Care Open Enrollment process has added some new twists to the problem of access to providers.
MassHealth and Commonwealth Care enrollments have slowed, and outreach workers are concentrating on "churn" problems, eligibility renewals and how to help clients whose CommCare premiums will go up on July 1.
This winter, about 100,000 households in the Commonwealth were protected from losing their heat, electricity and other utilities by the state utility shut-off protection laws, which prevents shut-off for households whose circumstances meet certain conditions. This protection ended on May 1, and people have begun getting shut-off notices. These notices are bad news, but CAN be used to request a MassHealth premium waiver or Commonwealth Care premium waiver.
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.
A new pamphlet offers step-by-step guidance, just in time for taxes.
The proposed co-pay schedule may limit access to care.
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.
