An additional 7,831 food stamp recipients who applied for coverage under Arkansas’ expanded Medicaid program were automatically assigned to private, Medicaid-funded plans last week, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services said Wednesday.
The automatic assignments, along with 121 applicants who chose plans for themselves using a state website, raised the total enrollment in private, Medicaid-funded plans to 57,739 as of Tuesday, an increase of 7,952 from Nov. 11, figures released by the Human Services Department show.
The Human Services Department assigns plans to recipients who fail to choose ones for themselves within 12 days of applying and being approved for coverage.
Including 4,959 Arkansans assigned as of Saturday to the traditional Medicaid program because of their health needs, enrollment in the state’s expanded Medicaid program stood at at least 62,698 as of Tuesday, the numbers show.
That total is more than a quarter of the 250,000 Arkansans estimated to be eligible for the expanded program.
“We do feel like it’s going well,” Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said. “There’s been no huge issues, and people are being able to go through the application process.”
Tonya Nahlen, a 61-yearold Pulaski Technical College student who is enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, said she signed up for a Medicaid-funded plan last month, after being notified by the Human Services Department that she was eligible.
Nahlen said her only income is student financial aid and payments she receives from a trust fund set up by her father, who died last year. A diabetic, she has been uninsured for about 15 years, she said.
“This means a lot to me,” Nahlen said. “The day I signed up, I was on cloud nine because I was receiving help that I’ve needed for quite some time.”
The expansion of the Medicaid program, authorized by the federal health-care overhaul law and approved by the state Legislature this year, extended eligibility for the program to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level - $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.
Most of those who enroll are expected to be able to sign up for private plans on the state’s health-insurance exchange and have Medicaid pay the premiums. About 10 percent - those identified as “medically frail” because of their health-care needs - will be assigned to the traditional Medicaid program.
So far, most of those who have enrolled have been food stamp recipients who received letters from the Human Services Department in September informing them of their eligibility.
Recipients who responded, indicating that they wanted coverage, were sent notices giving them 12 days to visit a state website, insureark.org, where they would be asked to complete questionnaires designed to identify the medically frail. Applicants not found to be medically frail can then use the website to sign up for plans.
On Nov. 5, the Human Services Department assigned 40,405 food-stamp recipients to private plans after they failed to choose plans through the state website within the 12-day period.
An additional 7,831 recipients were assigned to plans on Nov. 13, Webb said.
The assignments are made in accordance with a formula designed to ensure a minimum market share of people for each of the companies offering plans on the insurance exchange in seven coverage regions delineated by the Arkansas Insurance Department. The minimum share of the market ranges from 33 percent to 20 percent, depending on the number of insurers serving each of the seven regions.
After the minimum share is reached, the department makes assignments evenly among the companies in the coverage regions.
Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield and the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association are offering plans in every coverage region. Little Rock-based QualChoice Health Insurance is offering plans in five of the regions, and St. Louis-based Centene Corp.’s Arkansas Health and Wellness Solutions is offering plans in three regions.
Recipients automatically assigned to plans are given 30 days to switch plans if they want. After that, the next opportunity to change plans is in one year.
Webb said some food stamp recipients have changed from the plans they were assigned, but she didn’t have further details Wednesday.
In addition to those who were assigned to plans, 9,503 Arkansans had selected plans themselves through insureark.org as of Tuesday, according to the Human Services Department figures.
As of Saturday, the department had received 76,782 applications since enrollment began Oct. 1. That consisted of 63,465 responses from food stamp recipients, 3,148 applications submitted by phone or paper, and 10,169 applications made through a state website, access.arkansas.gov.
Webb said she didn’t know of any reported malfunctions involving the state enrollment websites. By contrast, enrollment through a federal website, healthcare.gov, has been hampered by software glitches and other problems.
In addition to accepting applications for Medicaid, the federal site is meant to allow users to apply for tax-credit subsidies to help pay their premiums for plans on the exchanges. The federal site is the application and enrollment portal for those subsidies for Arkansas and more than 30 other states that declined to set up their own health insurance exchanges.
The tax-credit assistance is available to those who don’t qualify for Medicaid and have incomes of less than 400 percent of the poverty level - $45,960 for an individual or$94,200 for a family of four.
As of Nov. 2, only 250 Arkansans had been able to select plans through the federal site, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. An additional 7,430 who applied through the site were found to be eligible for some form of Medicaid coverage, although numbers provided by the federal department didn’t go into further detail.
The state Human Services Department expects to receive Medicaid data from the federal site next week, Webb said.
Jennifer Chilcoat, the head of human resources for the Central Arkansas Library System, said Wednesday that the library’s five outreach workers - known as in-person assisters, or IPAs - hired under a contract with the Arkansas Insurance Department, are still mainly helping people with paper and phone applications.
As for the federal website, she said, “our IPAs have not been relying on it, just because they can’t be assured that it will work all the way to the end.”
Nahlen said she didn’t have any difficulty using the state website, insureark.org, when she selected a plan offered by Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Since then, however, she said she hasn’t received an insurance card or any other information from the company.
Webb said enrollees should receive information from the companies by mid- to late December.
Nahlen said she is hoping the coverage will help her buy test strips for her blood sugar monitor, allowing her to take readings twice a day, instead of once a day or every other day as she sometimes does now.
She is also looking forward to having more regular checkups. She hasn’t had a mammogram in years, she said, and her last screening for cervical cancer was about four years ago.
“There are just certain things that you’d like to have checked on when you’ve reached a certain age,” she said. “I have reached that age.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/21/2013