Navigators, In-Person Assisters and Brokers
The Alliance for Health Reform held a briefing on August 5, 2014 on “Navigating the Health Insurance Landscape: What’s Next for Navigators, In-Person Assisters and Brokers?”
Consumer enrollment in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) offered in the Exchange Marketplaces for 2014 was greatly assisted by Navigators, In-Person Assisters (including Certified Application Counselors) and Brokers. 28,000 navigators and assisters helped 10.6 million consumers during the first ACA open enrollment period. The Kaiser Family Foundation just completed a survey and issued a report entitled “Survey of Health Insurance Marketplace Assister Programs: A First Look under the Affordable Care Act“. The survey did not include agents and brokers. The survey reported that there were 4,400 assister programs nationwide. Certified Application Counsellor Programs account for 45 percent of the assister programs, in-person assistance programs were 26 percent, the FQHC share was 26 percent, Navigator programs represented only 2 percent and the Federal Enrollment Assistance program provided only 1 percent.
According to the Kaiser study, the federal government spent over $400 million on these assistance programs during the first year. $100 million came from Exchange establishment grants, $208 million from grants to FQHCs, and $105 million from CMS ACA implementation funds. In addition, there was substantial additional funding from private sources including non-profit community programs, hospitals and health care providers, state and local governments. Funding for assister programs in the state-based marketplaces and federal-state partnership markets was substantially higher than funding in the federal marketplaces. The uneven funding distribution meant that the number of assister staff per 10,000 uninsured was about half in the federal marketplaces.
Assistance was time intensive involving on average one to two hours for each client. The top three reasons consumers sought assistance included their limited understanding of the ACA and the need to understand plan choices and their lack of confidence in applying on their own. Information from QHP websites was inadequate and plans did not have dedicated phone lines for assisters. Assisters faced a number of challenges including lack of health insurance literacy, transportation issues in rural areas and lack of trust in certain hard to reach communities. States had only 10-12 weeks to hire and train most assisters. 92 percent of assisters wanted additional training especially in the areas of subsidies, tax penalties, and immigration issues. Successful techniques in reaching the target uninsured populations included partnership with community agencies, building on Medicaid and CHIP networks, use of mobile navigators and media outreach efforts. Back-end access to Exchange portals in some states, e.g. Maryland and New York greatly helped the assisters with their jobs. States with larger funding were able to conduct more outreach and education events and schedule one on one appointments.
There is no data on the number of agents and brokers that participated in the 2014 open enrollment period. The National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) reported high broker interest and their 2013 survey found that almost 75 percent were obtaining marketplace certification. HHS reported that 70,000 agents were certified by the federal marketplaces. State exchange data shows 30,000 additional agents and brokers were certified. The NAHU reported that agent and broker services had an 89 percent customer satisfaction rate. In general, state based exchanges were designed with better broker participation mechanisms than the federal marketplace, although all exchanges experienced technological issues. The level of collaboration between brokers and assisters varied across states. Some assisters were wary of brokers, largely because they received commissions from the plans. Others valued the expertise of the brokers.
90 percent of assister programs reported post-enrollment problems after the ACA open enrollment ended in April. The top problems identified included not receiving an insurance card, Medicaid eligibility determination problems, and failure to receive a premium invoice. Three fourths of the consumers lacked understanding of the basic insurance concepts. About one-third of the enrollees picked the wrong plan, for example because they didn’t understand high deductible plans or innovative benefit designs that covered some benefits but not others.
76 percent of the assister programs plan to continue during the second open enrollment. This open enrollment is 50 percent shorter than the first enrollment period and overlaps with tax season. The assisters will also be facing the QHP renewal process as well as uncertainly on the functionality of the online portals. New QHPs will be entering the marketplace. Federal Navigator funding will be $8 million less. States can continue to use their grants for the 2015 enrollment period, but they must be self-supporting in 2016. Additional education will be needed on tax penalties which will be three times larger if consumers don’t sign up in 2015.
NAHU expects broker participation in the 2015 open enrollment period to be high, although slightly lower than 2014. A June survey found that 69 percent of brokers plan to sell on the individual exchange in 2015. Brokers see opportunities with new plans entering the marketplace and the availability of the SHOP exchanges. Brokers and agents experienced a number of challenges in 2014 including payment and liability issues resulting from the failure of applications to record multiple assisters. NAHU recommends broker portals, additional fields to record multiple assister numbers on applications, ability to edit enrollment records to add NPNs and addition of a complete list of brokers on HHS.gov.
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