By
Roberta Riley
"This
is awesome! What a relief," she exclaimed when the message flashed up on
her screen: starting January 1, 2014, Ingrid will have no cost health
insurance. "I can finally get my knee fixed."
Everyday
she carts her shovel, loppers, saw and clippers up and down Seattle's steepest
neighborhoods, tending gardens, digging up shrubs and pruning trees. As the
sole proprietor of Seabiscuit Landscaping, Ingrid cannot afford to be hobbled
by a bum knee.
"If
it turns out I need surgery, I won't need to worry about huge medical bills.
Having health coverage means I can save for retirement," she said. This
year she turns 50, and every day she worries about how to make ends meet,
especially as she gets older.
Ingrid
is one of millions of Americans who will benefit from the Affordable Care
Act. As you may have heard, the
brand-new federal healthcare exchange got off to a rocky start in October. It
did not help matters that Republicans temporarily shut down the federal
government in a failed effort to defund this health reform measure. Yet, even
with the feds back in operation, technical problems with the federal website
persist.
Fortunately,
Ingrid and others in our state fared much better because leaders here opted to
create our own state exchange. As of this writing, over 92,000 Washingtonians
have signed up for coverage using Washington Healthplanfinder.
Ingrid
kindly allowed me observe as she plowed through the online enrollment process,
which took about an hour. This enabled us to come up with a few tips to help
others in our state get enrolled.
Before you begin, have a good strong cup of coffee and gather:
- last year’s tax return and this month’s income information;
- your bank account information; and
- the names and correct spellings of any doctors and/or hospital(s) where you would want to be treated.
Then go to
the official website://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/
(Be
careful to enter the correct site – there are scam sites out there.)
Click
on the box to begin an application, bearing in mind the site has some fussy
features, such as no AutoCorrect and a limited number of symbols that must be
used to create one's personal password.
Don't
be stymied by the strange, multiple-choice security questions at the outset. My
hunch is some of those questions are intended to verify you are a real human
being, not a machine. (But I confess, I
am not a computer programmer.)
The
next round of questions – asking about pregnancy status, long-term care,
whether any college students live in your household and whether you have unpaid
medical expenses – are geared to helping people get into certain programs.
Last
of all come questions about income, which determines whether an applicant
qualifies for no-cost or low-cost coverage.
This
part was somewhat perplexing for Ingrid because in one place, the application
asked about monthly income, and in another, about monthly business income. As a
sole proprietor, Ingrid's income is one and the same. So, at first she filled
in the same amount in both places, but quickly realized doing so made her
income appear double what it actually is. Then she put her last month's income into
the "gross monthly amount" bracket and a zero into the business
income bracket, and was able to properly deduct her business expenses by
dividing by 12 the total amount declared on her previous year's tax return.
She
checked her work for accuracy, then pressed the next button and immediately
learned of her new, no-cost coverage, a feature of the Medicaid expansion of
the Affordable Care Act. Her face beamed as she read the good news. It was a
sweet moment.
Then
an error message popped up: "the application has malfunctioned." She
wondered if she'd entered something incorrectly. She feared she might have to redo the entire
application.
So
she dialed the official call center and learned the system is currently overwhelmed with high volumes of people eager to enroll. In fact, the state announced plans to hire
145 more customer service representatives to work at its toll-free call center.
Fortunately,
Ingrid’s fears did not materialize. Within hours, she received an email message
with a link asking her to log in to the official website once again.
She
clicked on the link, logged in with her username and password, and, to her
delight, it all worked. A message popped up indicating her application was
received, and her Washington Apple Health Adult coverage begins 1-1-14.
A few days later, her brand-new health coverage card arrived in her snail mail.
At long last, financial security is within her reach.
(October has been an
extraordinarily busy month for both of the women I introduced to readers in my
last post. Business is booming for Heather,
28, the owner of Canary Salon on Broadway; and Carrie, 52, founder of Little Eorthe Farm in Orting, harvested a big crop of vegetables. Their Affordable Care Act enrollment stories
will follow in blog posts to come.)
The official website and call
center for the Washington State Exchange is:
1-855-WAFINDER (855-923- 4633) https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/Roberta Riley currently works for Northwest Health Law Advocates, a non-profit dedicated to health care for all. In her former role as Legal Counsel for Planned Parenthood, Ms. Riley won a groundbreaking federal court decision requiring health plan coverage of prescription contraception. She has also served as a consumer advocate at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and was appointed to the Washington State Health Reform Realization Panel by the Hon. Mike Kreidler. In recognition of her achievements on behalf of women, she was given a 2001 Ms. Magazine Women the Year Award.
A similar version of this article appears in the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans newsletter.
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