With less than two weeks left until the end of Open Enrollment two, assisters are racing to get everyone covered, including families with immigrants, often among the most difficult cases. 

I recently had a chance to help train more than 800 consumer assisters about how to overcome barriers to eligibility and enrollment for health coverage programs for families that include immigrants.  Since nearly half of uninsured kids in America live in families with immigrants, enrolling families with immigrants in coverage is a high priority for us at CCF.  I was thrilled to reach such an important audience: the folks that do the hard work of helping people enroll in health coverage in communities all across America. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services hosted the training as part of a weekly webinar series for a community of more than 25,000 consumer assisters across the country.  For more information about assisters, check out the Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent survey of this community.

The immigrant eligibility and application material is complex, so along with our partners, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the National Immigration Law Center, we included different family scenarios to provide examples of how to apply these rules.

We didn’t have a chance to address many of the audience questions in the 90 minute segments, and we’ll be doing some follow up work to try to address these questions in our future work.  If you follow me on Twitter @SonyaSchwartz, I’ll be sure to let you know when we do so. Also, if you missed the CMS webinars and would like training, stay tuned: The Center on Budget is planning to provide more training later this fall as part of its Beyond the Basics series.

Here are the links to the training slide decks:

• Webinar 1: September 19 at 2 to 3:30 EST – Immigrant eligibility for health coverage programs.  This webinar discussed immigrant eligibility rules for Medicaid/ CHIP and the marketplace, and also include a walk through of eligibility under different immigrant family scenarios.
• Webinar 2: September 26 at 2 to 3:30 EST – Addressing unique concerns about applying for health coverage and overcoming barriers to enrollment for families that include immigrants.  This webinar will cover issues important to families that include immigrants such as: immigration enforcement, public charge, and language access. It will also provide tips on navigating some common barriers in the application process for families that include immigrants. 
• Webinar 3: January 30: 2:00 EST – An updated version of our webinar on applying for health coverage and overcoming barriers to enrollment for families that include immigrants.  This webinar covered issues important to families that include immigrants such as: immigration enforcement, public charge, and language access. It also walks through where to find important information on the most common immigration documents and provides updated tips navigating some common barriers in the application process for families that include immigrants. 
• Webinar 4: Feb 6:  2:00 EST – An updated version of our webinar on immigrant eligibility for health coverage programs.  This webinar discussed immigrant eligibility rules for the marketplace, and also walked through eligibility under different immigrant family scenarios.  CMS provided an overview of immigrant eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP so it is not included in detail in this slide deck (see webinar 1 for more on Medicaid and CHIP).