Illinois, smooth start for insurance sign-ups
Teams across Illinois worked Saturday to sign up people for insurance under President Barack Obama's health care law, using a streamlined application and a website that functioned without the glitches and crashes they remembered from a year ago.
"The system hasn't slowed down, nothing's crashed. ... So no complaints," said Patrice Howard of the Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation as she drove between enrollment events in East St. Louis and Madison. "We just have to make sure we get people in the doors."
With only three months of open enrollment this year, the community organizations funded to help with the outreach face a challenge. The second sign-up season under the Affordable Care Act continues through Feb. 15, a shorter time frame by half compared to last year and interrupted by the holidays.
On the plus side, the online application has been simplified, cut to 16 computer screens from 76. Navigation is easier. Window shopping is available on HealthCare.gov without first having to create an account.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell tweeted Saturday that more than 23,000 people submitted applications within the first eight hours in the 37 states using the site, including Illinois. She said 1.2 million unique visitors looked at coverage using the site's window-shopping tool in the last week.
The smoother sign-up experience was refreshing, according to Illinois enrollment workers around the state who spoke with The Associated Press by phone. Last year, they remembered, they stared at frozen computer screens.
"It's much, much better," said Steve Goldston of Aunt Martha's, an Olympia Fields-based nonprofit community health organization, who was supervising sign-ups in Kankakee, Aurora and Joliet. "It's going to go a lot faster."
More than 70 events were planned Saturday at libraries, hospitals and churches across the state. At a church in Chicago, Juanita Dorantes of Access Community Health Network helped two people renew their private insurance plans and two others sign up for Medicaid, a government program for low-income people.
One woman who had a private health plan switched to another policy with lower out-of-pocket expenses. The process took only about 30 minutes, Dorantes said, including a successful call to the HealthCare.gov help line to get the woman's password reset.
"That was nothing compared to what it was last year," Dorantes said. "If we were lucky last year it was a three-hour process."
Financial help is available on a sliding scale, depending on income. Nearly 80 percent of Illinois residents who signed up for coverage last season qualified for the financial assistance. Those federal subsidies are being challenged in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will be decided next spring.
With that case pending, Gov. Pat Quinn reiterated his support Saturday for an Illinois-operated health insurance marketplace and called on the state House to pass a bill to authorize it during the legislation session that starts next week.
"I'd like to see the House take it up and pass it," said Quinn at a wellness fair on Chicago's south side. "I think it's the best way to go."
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Online: https://getcoveredillinois.gov/