Health Insurance Assistance Plan Revamped

Hospital waiting area. (Public Domain)

A project to help Milwaukee County residents pay their health insurance premiums will not be moving forward.

In March, the Milwaukee County Board approved providing $500,000 to The Milwaukee Premium Assistance Program being developed by the Milwaukee Health Care Partnership, which is a coalition of local governments, health systems and health centers. The county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) sought the county’s contribution to put toward a $3.5 million fund for premium assistance.

The funding would be targeted to county residents that were recently kicked off of Medicaid. On May 11, the national emergency declaration for the COVID-19 pandemic will expire. This declaration allowed people to remain on Medicaid without re-enrolling.

Not everyone booted from Medicaid on May 11 will lose their health insurance. Some will have already gained new insurance through their employment, while others may be earning more money and no longer eligible for Medicaid. But as many as 90,000 county residents could lose their health insurance.

The premium assistance program would use federal ARPA funds to subsidize new health insurance plans purchased on the federally-subsidized marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. The proposal, sponsored by Sup. Shawn Rolland, was okayed by the county ARPA task force and won approval from the county board.

But now DHHS and Rolland want to change how the $500,000 is used, as he explained to Urban Milwaukee: “The Milwaukee Health Care Partnership was optimistic that they would be able to raise the full amount they needed to fund the program. After subsequent conversations with other stakeholders, they don’t believe they have enough partner buy-in to fund the premium assistance program appropriately.” This means the $3.5 million plan can’t go forward.

Instead, a new proposal will go before the county’s ARPA Task Force this month that would have the county to redirect its $500,000 contribution to fund an effort “to encourage re-enrollment via other means,” Rolland said.

The state will begin requiring residents to re-enroll in Medicaid beginning in June. Many have not enrolled in Medicaid in more than a year and there is likely to be confusion about the re-enrollment process, according to a memo from  Steve Gorodetskiy, DHHS Strategic Initiatives Director to the ARPA Task Force.

“The result may be that vulnerable residents may discover they no longer have insurance at the moment they have a medical need, or a resident may not seek out health care services because of the confusion of this Medicaid unwinding,” Gorodetskiy wrote. “This issue is likely to affect Milwaukee County’s residents who identify as Black or Hispanic the most, given what data tells us about who is currently enrolled in Medicaid.”

The new suggestion is to use $100,000 to support existing public awareness campaigns, $300,000 to fund “entities or contractors” that can help residents re-enroll or find new health insurance and $40,000 to fund training for county staff and other community organizations that can help people re-enroll. The remaining $60,000 will be used to cover administrative costs and materials and technology needed to help residents re-enroll.

The proposal will need final approval from the county board, but it will first be reviewed by the ARPA Task Force May 11, the final day of the emergency declaration.