Starting in under three weeks, Arkansans shopping for health insurance coverage will be able to call a Little Rock nonprofit for help.
Funded by a $299,929, one-year contract awarded Tuesday by the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, operators with the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care will answer calls from consumers with questions about the coverage offered on the state's health insurance exchanges starting Oct. 31.
Ray Hanley, the foundation's chief executive, said the calls will go to operators in the foundation's call center in Little Rock, which has 60 operators and already handles about 1,000 calls a day from Medicaid recipients and applicants under contracts with the state Department of Human Services.
The insurance marketplace calls will be answered from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The call center operators will be able to answer some questions. But in many cases, they will transfer the caller elsewhere, such as to an insurance broker, an outreach worker or a call center operated by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
"It's a good fit for us," Hanley said. "We know the terminology, we have the technology. It just makes sense for us."
Establishing the call center is a requirement for the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace as it takes over responsibility for the exchange for individual consumers.
Consumers will continue to enroll through the federal website, healthcare.gov, but the Health Insurance Marketplace is assuming responsibility for certifying plans sold on the exchange and answering questions from consumers.
Money for the call center contract will come from a $99.9 million grant awarded to the Health Insurance Marketplace by the federal government in late 2014.
During the open-enrollment period that begins Nov. 1, the marketplace will also use money from the grant on a marketing campaign that will include television commercials, direct mail and messages on social media platforms, said Alicia McCoy, a spokesman for the marketplace.
Marketing firm Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods will conduct the campaign as part of a two-year, $5.8 million contract awarded by the marketplace last year, McCoy said.
Using money from a fee collected from insurance companies, the marketplace also plans to pay two organizations about $550,000 to provide 15 outreach workers, known as "navigators," to provide one-on-one help with enrollment, McCoy said.
She expects contracts to those organizations to be awarded this week.
Under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, insurance exchanges allow consumers to shop for coverage and apply for subsidies to help pay for it.
Rep. Nate Bell, I-Mena, said he doesn't have a problem with the Health Insurance Marketplace conducting an outreach campaign, as long as the purpose is to educate people about their options, rather than to promote a government program.
In 2014, he sponsored legislation prohibiting three state departments -- Insurance, Health, and Human Services -- from promoting enrollment in the state's insurance exchanges.
Other special language passed this year prohibited colleges and universities from operating navigator programs after June 30.
"I don't want to see taxpayers financing a political operation to go convince the world that, 'Oh, look, isn't the [Affordable Care Act] wonderful? Look how rosy your life is because the ACA's here,'" Bell said.
Following the recommendation of its staff and consumer assistance committee, the marketplace's board of directors on Tuesday unanimously chose the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care over Answer Fort Smith, which also responded to a bid solicitation late last month for the call center contract.
According to a presentation to the committee by the Boston-based Public Consulting Group, Answer Fort Smith bid $764,699, which was above the $500,000 budget for the call center approved by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
Answer Fort Smith also didn't follow a requirement in the bid solicitation to provide audited financial statements and doesn't provide "translation services" for non-English speakers, according to the presentation.
The Legislature created the Health Insurance Marketplace in 2013 to set up health insurance exchanges for individual consumers and small businesses.
The agency set up a small business exchange last year but, at the request of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, has held off on plans to use money from the grant to set up a state-run enrollment system for individual consumers.
Plans offered on the small-business exchange cover about 300 Arkansans, while exchange plans for individual consumers cover more than 350,000 people.
That includes more than 294,000 low-income Arkansans who were in Medicaid-supported plans under the so-called private option as of Aug. 31 and about 60,000 who were in non-Medicaid plans as of Oct. 1.
Hutchinson has supported taking responsibility for the individual insurance exchange as a way of lowering the fee paid by insurance companies that offer plans on the exchange.
Insurers currently pay the federal government a fee equal to 3.5 percent of the premiums for the non-Medicaid plans they offer on the exchange.
That federal fee will drop to 1.5 percent next year as Arkansas takes responsibility for the individual exchange. The Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace plans to collect a 3 percent fee to include the federal fee as well as pay for its own operations.
A Section on 10/12/2016