Tag: navigators

Feds funding ‘navigators’ to encourage signups

 

By  Mike Dennison, Independent Record State Bureau

Once again, the federal government is funding “navigators” in Montana to help the uninsured buy private, subsidized health coverage this fall — with a new emphasis on Native American consumers.

Earlier this month, federal officials awarded $609,000 in navigator grants to three Montana groups: Planned Parenthood of Montana, the Montana Health Network and the Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council.

“We had great, great success with the program last year,” Martha Stahl, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Montana, said Monday. “I think it’s a great way to continue our mission of connecting people with affordable health care, which is what we’re all about.”

Stahl said her group will be working closely with the other two grant recipients and other organizations to sign up more people for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, as well as target Native Americans. Planned Parenthood and the Health Network had navigator programs last year.

Navigators, who must be certified by the state insurance commissioner, help people buy private health insurance through the online “marketplace,” a key part of the ACA, the federal health-care overhaul also known as “Obamacare.”

Individuals buying policies on the marketplace can get federal subsidies to offset the cost of those policies. Lower-income consumers also can get further discounts on certain marketplace policies.

Most consumers who earn less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level — about $79,000 for a family of three — are eligible for the subsidies, which are paid directly to the insurance company.

The Obama administration launched the marketplaces last October in 34 states, including Montana, initially with disastrous results. Beset with technical problems, the marketplaces barely worked.

However, by the end of March, more than 36,000 Montanans gained coverage through marketplace policies, out of 8 million people nationwide.

The marketplaces will open again this year Nov. 15. Customers can shop for and purchase new policies for 2015. Four companies will be offering policies on Montana’s marketplace.

Cheryl Belcourt, executive director of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council in Billings, said the group will use its $142,000 grant to hire some navigators and coordinate with other groups to encourage Native Americans both on and off reservations to buy marketplace policies.

Many Native Americans think the policies are not for them, because they expect to use the Indian Health Service and don’t face a tax penalty if they’re not insured, Belcourt said.

However, the affordable private policies and their low-cost coverage can expand health care for Native Americans, she said.

“This is an opportunity to address the health disparities of Native American people,” Belcourt said. “We want to be able to really make a difference in terms of the quality of life for Indian people.”

Chris Hopkins of the Montana Health Network, a consortium of smaller hospitals and health-care centers, said its $175,000 grant will be used to add nine new navigators to the 20 it already trained with last year’s grant. Most of them are staffers at hospitals and nursing homes.

“Our focus is to have local people providing services in their own community, rather than having someone come in from the outside, do a presentation, and then leave,” he said.

The Montana Primary Care Association, which represents federally funded health clinics, had a navigator program last year but did not get a grant this year.

Amanda Harrow of the association said clinics will continue to work with various groups to help people sign up for ACA-subsidized policies.

Navigators help get Native Americans insurance

Associated Press

Insurance enrollment helpers are encouraging Native Americans to sign up for coverage under the nation’s new healthcare law, saying it will help them better access X-rays, mammograms, prescription drugs and trips to specialists not covered under Indian Health Service.

American Indians are exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that people carry insurance, but the law opens up resources that for years have been limited through IHS, said Jerilyn Church, executive director of the South Dakota-based Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board.
“There’s a huge gap in access to services, so being enrolled in the marketplace is going to make a big difference in terms of accessibility to healthcare,” Church said.

The Indian Health Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides free healthcare to enrolled members of tribes, their descendants and some others as part of the government’s treaty obligations to Indian tribes dating back nearly a century.

Critics long have complained of insufficient financial support that has led to constant turnover among doctors and nurses, understaffed hospitals, sparse specialty care and long waits to see a doctor.

The Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board received $264,000 in South Dakota and $186,000 in North Dakota to assist with Native American signups on the states’ reservations and urban areas.

The new law healthcare law will especially benefit people who seek treatment at urban Indian health clinics, which collectively are funded by just 1 percent of the IHS budget, said Ashley Tuomi, executive director of the American Indian Health and Family Services clinic in Detroit.

“Our resources are extremely limited, even more so than the tribes,” Tuomi said. “What we have within our walls is what we can offer for free.”

The clinic has seen a lot of patient interest in the healthcare marketplace, but “navigators” helping with signups have had to cancel many appointments because of continued issues with the federal healthcare.gov website, Tuomi said.

The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska has received about $38,000 in federal grant funds to encourage signups for tribal members scattered in 12 counties in Nebraska, two in Iowa and one in South Dakota.

The tribe’s IHS-contracted clinic in Omaha, Neb., has a medical doctor and two nurse practitioners, but the X-rays, specialists and prescriptions that are outsourced are not covered, said Jan Henderson, the tribe’s navigator project director. “And if they don’t have insurance, they have to pay for it themselves,” she said.

Tribes across the country get some federal money for referrals, but the small pools run out quickly, Henderson said.

She views the new healthcare law as a great step for Native Americans, but the greatest challenge is educating tribal members who are weary from decades of promises of improved healthcare.

“Education is very important in this right now to get people to be open to actually hearing about it,” Henderson said. “We hear a lot of people who say they don’t need this, they don’t want this.”