Last year, more than 700 assisters were trained and licensed to help consumers enroll in coverage offered through the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplace and Arkansas’s Private Option. The experience of enrollment assisters provides an important perspective for improving health coverage enrollment in the coming years. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families facilitated three focus groups of enrollments assisters at three regional Arkansans for Coverage Summits in June of 2014. These focus groups were voluntary opportunities for assisters of any type (in-person assisters, navigators, certified application counselors, or outreach enrollment assisters) to share their experiences from the open enrollment (October 1, 2013 through March 31st, 2014). Despite their enthusiasm for aiding consumers, open enrollment was a challenge for assisters. You can see all of our findings in our new report, “Connectors to Coverage: Supporting enrollment in Arkansas.”
Barriers to enrolling consumers included:
· Technical issues and difficulty accessing technical assistance or resources.
· Challenges with determining the eligibility and enrolling consumers in complex situations.
· Difficulty overcoming consumer’s negative perceptions of the Affordable Care Act and the Private Option.
Assisters suggested improvements to enrollment and outreach best practices, training, and technical assistance, providing useful insight into improving the 2015 experience for consumers. Due to outreach restrictions placed upon state agencies by the Arkansas legislature, the amount of assisters available to help consumers will be greatly reduced during this upcoming open enrollment from November 15, 2014 to February 15, 2015. This creates an even greater need for state agencies and other stakeholders to consider the feedback of assisters and implement the changes suggested. These improvements will aid current assisters in connecting the more than 200,000 remaining uninsured consumers to coverage.