By Kathleen Hamilton (The Children’s Partnership) Nicette Short (Children Now) on behalf of the 100% Campaign
California’s Health Benefit Exchange – now commonly known as HBEX – continued to press on with its work in a fast-paced manner and held two meetings in May, with another to be held tomorrow.
The HBEX Board demonstrated its interest in public input and its contemporaneous flexibility by taking the suggestion of a member of the public to modify the qualifications for the Executive Director to include knowledge of public health coverage programs such as Medicaid and Healthy Families (California’s CHIP).
The Board also announced it had reconsidered its previous decision to apply for a Level II Establishment grant by September 30, 2011, and will now submit an application for a Level I Establishment grant by June 30th. HBEX Chair Diana Dooley noted that the Board has listened to stakeholder comments on these issues, and agrees that this move would allow California to secure the needed and significant resources required to move forward most expeditiously.
The Board’s Acting Administrator Patricia Powers shared a glimpse of the Board’s most immediate goals – which included shaping a formal stakeholder process. That process will include convening technical workgroups to inform HBEX staff in between Board meetings, hosting webinars to get input from a broader outreach of stakeholders, and holding Board meetings in other geographic areas of the state outside of Sacramento. So far, stakeholder participation during Public Comments has been rich and diverse, and for the time being, the process will be to continue to include public comment periods during each Board agenda item, and the opportunity to submit written testimony at Board meetings on a Public Comment Form. Between meetings stakeholders have been invited to contact the Board via the HBEX website.
Keenly aware of the many critical issues it will have to master and address in short order, the Board is grounding itself in a presentations from an array of experts, drilling down on everything from coordination with other state entities to local and state IT capabilities.
One such presentation was provided by Terri Shaw, project director for the emerging User Experience Project (a federally sponsored effort supported by the California HealthCare Foundation), who discussed the project’s goal to create a model user-friendly enrollment system. The project will focus on understanding the behavior and needs of all potential users and guide states in developing a “no wrong door” enrollment system.
The May 24th meeting also included presentations designed to set the landscape for program integration at the state and local level. California’s Department of Managed Health Care, the California Department of Insurance, the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB, which oversees the Healthy Families Program), and representatives from the County Welfare Directors Association all assured the Board that they are prepared to continue working together to integrate programs in a way that best assures access to health coverage in California.
The good news is that state and local agencies seem genuinely committed to a coordinated approach that will work, but that catch is that this tremendous amount of work will need to be done in two and a half short years.
The next HBEX Board meeting will take place on June 15th, where federal representatives from the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CIIO) and Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO) are scheduled to address the Board. Clearly, the Board will need to have as deep a grasp of the federal requirements, timelines, and expectations for implementing the California HBEX so that it is ready by January 1, 2014. Given our ongoing budget negotiations and of the complex state and local implications of the HBEX itself, this should be an interesting meeting — one we will no doubt leave with an even greater sense of the enormous magnitude of work to be done in an ever shrinking time frame.
