[Editor’s Note: Open Enrollment is officially closed but HHS announced that those trying to enroll on February 15 may be eligible for an extension until February 22. ]
By JoAnn Volk, Tricia Brooks, Sabrina Corlette and Sandy Ahn
As open enrollment (often called “OE2”) for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act draws to a close, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the thousands of navigators, application counselors, brokers, tax advisors and other assisters have who spent countless hours educating consumers about their coverage options, guiding them through the application process, and helping them enroll in a plan. Their hard work contributed to the success of OE2 with an estimated 11.4 million people having signed up or re-enrolled in plans on the health insurance marketplaces, exceeding the earlier enrollment projections of the Obama Administration.
Along the way, thanks to a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we at Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms and Center for Children and Families have had the privilege of providing technical assistance to Navigator grantees in a handful of states. We asked for – and received – some of their thorniest and most complicated questions on the wide range of issues facing consumers as they apply for and enroll in new coverage options. We tried our best to provide them with timely answers by digging into a constantly evolving set of federal and state laws, regulations, and policy guidance.
Many of the same issues and problems arose time and time again in the questions we received over the course of OE2. We thus decided it would be helpful to share some of these questions – and our answers – with a broader audience. This compilation of questions and answers includes topics such as affordability exemptions, premium tax credits and tax penalties, the effects of mid-year changes in marital status, calculating income for the self-employed, minimum essential coverage vs. minimum value, and changes in smoking status. It can be downloaded here.
Many more of these types of questions and answers – almost 300 of them – can be found on our online, searchable NavigatorGuide, available at navigatorguide.georgetown.edu.
We know that the work for many navigators and assisters is by no means complete, as consumers who were “in line” at the close of enrollment and those qualifying for special enrollment periods will continue to need help. Additionally, Medicaid and CHIP are open for enrollment year-round. However, we want to take this opportunity to extend all assisters our heartfelt thanks for all they have done to help people get access to affordable, meaningful coverage.
