MassHealth, Speaking up!, Individual Mandate

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 summer, MassHealth starting enforcing the rule that households who hadn’t paid their premium bills for 60 days or more would lose their MassHealth or Children’s Medical Security Program (CMSP) coverage. Members of these households may be starting to show up at hospitals and health centers, they may have no coverage, and they can’t get the Health Safety Net.

"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 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.

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.