The federal website to enroll in 2019 health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act is now open for browsing.
The website is healthcare.gov.
The plans won’t be for sale until ACA open enrollment begins Thursday and is scheduled to end Dec. 15. But the 2019 plans have been loaded, so people can go online and see what’s available and how much they might cost. The ACA is also known as “Obamacare.”
Help is available from Georgia’s new federally funded navigator organization, Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health (it’s for everyone, not just refugees). The organization was chosen by the Trump administration to be Georgia’s statewide navigator this year. It said that it would have its navigator phone number — 1-888-230-7772 — staffed in English and Spanish by Thursday. It plans to have two websites as well, where information will be available at https://healthcarega.org and https://obamacareparalatinos.org.
The federal enrollment center also takes calls at 1-800-318-2596 (TTY: 1-855-889-4325). And last year’s navigator, Insure Georgia, is trying to make a go of it, with its staffers registering as insurance agents and planning to continue to guide shoppers. It is still at insurega.org and 1-866-988-8246.
Prices for the health plans this year are expected to be mostly on par with last year. Last year's announcement of 2018 prices was a brutal shock to most customers, with prices spiking anywhere from 30 percent to more than 50 percent. Companies said they had to build in uncertainty they were facing from GOP efforts in Washington to repeal the ACA or undo parts of it.
The silver lining is that prices rose so much last year that this year they don't need to rise more, and analysts say companies now appear to have baked in the uncertainty. In fact, many plans are decreasing in price this year over last. The trend is not just in Georgia but nationwide.
The flip side of that coin is that for those who don’t qualify for subsidies, out-of-pocket costs are still very high.
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