Payers Face Challenges to Enroll Newly Uninsured

by Jane Anderson

Health insurers are conducting outreach to people who may have been left without coverage as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, but experts say they may be partially stymied in their efforts to get people enrolled in new plans by the difficulties of operating within a pandemic environment.

AmeriHealth Caritas, which is run by Independence Blue Cross in partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, says it has launched a series of videos designed to help potential Medicaid enrollees learn how they can apply.

Meanwhile, Fort Worth, Texas-based Care N' Care Health Plan, which offers Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, is urging newly unemployed seniors — who already were Medicare-eligible but delayed signing up because they still had health insurance through a job — to get coverage now. So it's deploying a public relations campaign stressing that those people don't need to wait until open enrollment begins later this year to choose an MA plan.

In addition, most state Medicaid agencies have tried to make it easier for people to apply for coverage during the pandemic by offering a dedicated phone line for enrollment assistance, providing real-­time eligibility decisions, and waiving interviews and other documentation requirements, according to a Health Affairs blog post.

Medicaid managed care organizations are conducting their own outreach, and "they're really great at consumer engagement with the Medicaid population," Jerry Vitti, founder and CEO of Healthcare Financial, Inc., tells AIS Health. "But the folks who are newly uninsured are not a typical Medicaid population," and states and plans may need different types of communications to reach people and enroll them, he says.

So far, Medicaid plans are not seeing as big an influx of enrollees as they might have expected in the pandemic.

"People are forgoing health care, mostly preventive non-emergency visits, in favor of more pressing needs like eating and paying rent — addressing these underlying social determinants of health is primary, so health coverage kind of falls between the cracks," Vitti says. "Another reason may be that people are expecting to return to work when this is all over and are just waiting to get their old employer coverage back."

Since "at the very least I think we're looking at a protracted COVID-related recession," he says, "we should eventually see the enrollment increase they were expecting.

From Health Plan Weekly