At both HAN meetings, Brian Rosman from Health Care For All (HCFA) led a discussion about the next steps in Health Care Reform. Before he spoke, outreach workers exchanged stories about how some of new policies in Health Care Reform are working out in practice.
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.
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.
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.
