Obamacare open enrollment off to a typical, if glitchy, start

As new players and old hands opened their doors to Obamacare insurance shoppers, they said the first day of open enrollment went fine, but with some glitches.

The federal government typically does not release numbers for how many signed up for the exchange market under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, until it’s been underway a few days. But a federal navigator organization, a charity and a private insurance agent each said they had assisted people who knew about open enrollment, which began Thursday, and were starting to investigate their options.

"We were very concerned about being known, that people would not know how to access us," said Kathleen Connors, who is heading up HealthCareGA and ObamacareParaLatinos, the brand-new statewide English- and Spanish-language navigator groups run by her nonprofit, Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health. Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health received the state's only federal grant for ACA navigator guidance this year, a grant that was significantly reduced from previous years.

However, Connors said, “things are going really well,” with people calling in to the new toll-free number and also stopping by.

On the downside, the federal website that insurance brokers use to sign up people apparently was overwhelmed and unreachable during the day Thursday, said Kirk-Lyman Barner, an agent in Sumter County.

He had to write down clients’ information himself and then type in the applications on the website after 8 p.m. The site was functioning much better Friday, he said.

There is rarely a rush of actual sign-ups on the first day of ACA open enrollment, said Fred Ammons, the CEO of Community Health Works, which runs Insure Georgia. That group is now a nonprofit insurance agency after losing its federal grant to run ACA navigation. Now that plans and prices are posted, his handful of agents have been calling people back who asked for information. More of Insure Georgia’s former navigators will be getting their insurance agent certifications soon, he said.

The impact of the reduced navigation grants is the big question mark this year. The federal government has reduced navigation funding in Georgia from $3 million two years ago to over $1 million last year to $500,000 this year. Last year, the advertising budget, especially informative for people who don’t have internet access, effectively went away.

But analysts said that the impact of news accounts about the federal actions defunding advertising had the effect of doing that advertising itself.

This year, there’s not as much news surrounding Obamacare from Washington, although it has become a big campaign issue. Connors believes that media attention to new navigator organizations from both newspaper and TV as well as Spanish-language media have played a role in getting the word out to the clients who’ve come in so far.

In any case, Ammons said, the election is taking attention away from most everything else right now. “Most of the work before Nov. 6 is just isn’t going to get traction,” he said.

WHERE TO ENROLL

• Federal Affordable Care Act/Obamacare enrollment happens on the federal website healthcare.gov, or through the federal call center at 800-318-2596.

ACA NAVIGATOR EVENTS SATURDAY