STATE COLLEGE – The second open enrollment period for health insurance available through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace is right around the corner.
Those who want insurance coverage starting Jan. 1, 2015 will have only a month, beginning Nov. 15, to pick the plan that suits their needs and their budget from the ACA Marketplace. (The enrollment period will extend through Feb. 15 for those whose insurance starts later).
And for the first time in Pennsylvania, people who didn’t earn enough to purchase insurance through the ACA Marketplace but didn’t qualify for Medicaid, will be able to sign up for health insurance under HealthyPA’s Private Coverage Option. The sign up period for HealthyPA begins Dec. 1.
This forum is designed to begin to answer enrollment questions and to provide information about where people can go to get help enrolling. The panel includes:
- Rozanne Turczyn, of the Centre County League of Women Voters, who will provide a background of the ACA.
- Patrick Keenan, of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, who will describe what the ACA offers individuals and families.
- Walt Whitmer, of Penn State Cooperative Extension, who will focus on what ACA offers small businesses and Extension’s ACA Web site.
- Susan Michalik, of MidPenn Legal Services, who will cover HealthyPA: Medicaid Expansion in Pennsylvania.
- Lynne Grimm, from Keystone Rural Health, who will talk about Enrollment Assistance from Keystone’s Mountaintop Medical Center.
- Cheryl White, of Centre Volunteers in Medicine, will explain how CVIM will continue to help people living in Centre County meet health care needs even if they remain uninsured after the ACA goes into effect.
Following the presentations, questions will be taken from the audience.
More than a dozen community and state-wide organizations have come together to co-sponsor this public information session on obtaining insurance made available through the Affordable Care Act and HealthyPA.
The forum, The Affordable Care Act: Getting Health Insurance for 2015, will be held in Council Chambers at the State College Borough Building, 243 S. Allen St., on Oct. 28, beginning at 7 p.m.
The Affordable Care Act (also known as ACA, and commonly referred to as Obamacare) is the program that is designed to make sure everyone has access to quality, affordable health insurance. The law was adopted four years ago and some provisions have already gone into effect, including:
- Prohibiting insurance companies from using pre-existing conditions to deny coverage/charge higher rates to children.
- Allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s health plan until they turn 26.
- Making it illegal for insurance companies to cancel coverage when a person gets sick.
- Eliminating lifetime limits on insurance coverage.
- Requiring insurance companies to give customers a rebate if the company spends less than 80-85 percent of premiums on providing health care.
The types of benefits that must be included in each plan has been defined through the ACA. This package is called the Essential Health Benefits. The premium charged for insurance varies, depending such factors as: the number of people being covered; their age(s); the copays and out-of-pocket costs chosen by the person/family; and whether the covered individual is a smoker. Many people qualify for tax credits to help pay the cost of obtaining insurance.