A report documenting the history of Medicare Part D was released this year by health-policy experts at Georgetown University. It highlighted several areas where Medicare Part D struggled in its implementation.
The online tools had "accuracy problems," and local organizations designated with assisting seniors "reported problems getting necessary and accurate information." Call centers provided by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services underestimated "the needed capacity to ensure that reliable answers could be provided" and "service representatives were not knowledgeable or failed to provide accurate information."
The Georgetown experts anticipated similar hiccups with the Affordable Care Act, noting that the country's experience with Medicare Part D suggested "the experience will be far from perfect" and "problems were not always addressed as quickly or as thoroughly as critics would have liked, but fixes were usually found."
"There's really a striking amount of similarity even though this time it's a far larger and daunting task. It's a fair comparison," said Jack Hoadley one of the authors of the study.
Pelosi said the Affordable Care Act doesn't require insurance companies to send out the cancellation notices that people have been getting. While there's some element of truth to this statement, one of the major thrusts of the law is it sets minimum standards. The law intentionally makes it difficult for companies to avoid these minimums and the industry has responded by moving away from sub-par plans.
The Affordable Care Act sets standards for the services pretty much every plan must cover. There are 10 "essential health benefits," and the list includes emergency services, maternity care and mental-health care. If policyholders bought plans before Obama signed his reform into law on March 23, 2010, they're considered "grandfathered." They can keep their plans, so long as those plans don't change much.
Once a plan loses its grandfathered status, it's on the road to oblivion. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act says that if an insurer wants to end a policy,it must give 90-day notice and information about alternative coverage plans. That's essentially the message that many individual-market policyholders have been getting in the mail.
Users of the http://connectforhealthco.com/ website should not purchase a policy before applying, qualifying and receiving any available the federal subsidies. Purchasing a policy before the subsidy is applied will result in losing the subsidy. Currently, this cannot be changed.
This writer confirmed the above with several customer service assistants at Connect. The Connect site does not explain this sufficiently.
To qualify for a subsidy, Colorado requires the applicant to fill out a time consuming and detailed application on the PEAK website http://coloradopeak.force.com. Once completed, the submitted application is reviewed. If the application is denied, a case number is assigned containing the letter "B" and is sent to Connect. The Connect site then displays premiums with the subsidy applied, and applicants can then purchase a plan.
http://www.factcheck.org/
Chip Tuthill, Mancos
