Affordable Care Numbers Rebound in State

More than 212,000 Wisconsin residents signed up for health care coverage using the federal marketplace offered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the open enrollment period that ended earlier this month, the state insurance commissioner’s office reported Monday.

The number of people who signed up is the highest since the 2018 open enrollment period and the fourth-highest since the marketplace began taking enrollments in 2013.

The 2022 open enrollment period began Nov. 1, 2021, and ran for 11 weeks, through Jan. 15, 2022 — a month longer than the last four annual enrollment periods. A total of 212,209 Wisconsin residents signed up for health insurance plans in that period, according to the state Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI).

“Giving people nearly a month more to sign up for coverage really helped,” says William Parke-Sutherland, who analyzes health care policy for Kids Forward, a research and advocacy group for families and children. “This is one difference between the Trump administration’s handling of the open enrollment period and the Biden administration’s handling of it.”

Both Parke-Sutherland and OCI also give credit to expanded state and federal support for official health care navigators. Health care navigators provide free guidance to consumers seeking coverage, helping people sign up for health plans and advising them on federal subsidies to lower the cost.

“We owe a lot of credit to navigators that are talking to consumers directly,” said Sarah Smith, OCI’s director of public affairs.

The state provided $2 million last year to CoveringWisconsin, which provides navigator services and also works with other navigator organizations around Wisconsin. The federal government provided another $2 million to community nonprofits that provide similar help.

In 2020, in a partnership with the state Department of Health Services (DHS), OCI established WisCovered.com, a website that directs consumers to enrollment information, including navigator resources. The website had visits from more than 8,000 Wisconsin residents during the just-concluded open enrollment period, according to OCI.

The navigators’ assistance may have been especially helpful in making people aware of additional temporary subsidies under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that further lowered the cost of insurance for low- and moderate-income people, Smith said.

The subsidies “make it so that somebody who earns up to 150% of the federal poverty [guideline] is looking at close to zero dollars in premiums and some extended support for copays and deductibles,” Parke-Sutherland says. “It’s important to remember that those extra subsidies will expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them.”

In addition to the open enrollment period that ended Jan. 15, the federal government also established a separate special enrollment period in 2021 from Feb. 15 to Aug. 15. In Wisconsin, 33,716 people signed up for health insurance during that period, about twice as many as signed up in that same time period in 2020 or 2019.

Individuals can also qualify to sign up for health coverage outside the open enrollment period based on changes in their personal circumstances, such as losing health coverage, getting married or expanding their family.

The federal marketplace is the centerpiece of the ACA, enacted in 2010 to expand coverage for health care. The law sets minimum standards for what most insurance plans, including those sold through the marketplace, must cover. It also provides subsidies to lower the cost of premiums to people based on their income.

State credits outreach efforts, new incentives for increased health insurance signups was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.