Although they're working with a smaller budget compared with last year, members of a state panel said Friday they hope to encourage more Arkansans to sign up for coverage offered on the state's health insurance exchange during the open enrollment period that starts Nov. 1.
The Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, which is responsible for helping Arkansans enroll in coverage through healthcare.gov, will reuse many of the same radio and television commercials it ran a year earlier, with some tweaks to update the information.
And, unlike last year, the agency won't have to compete with a presidential election for consumers' attention.
"I think we're only going to build upon the numbers that we had last year," said Mark Meadors, chairman of the marketplace board's marketing committee.
The committee met Friday to begin discussing a marketing plan that will be submitted for approval to the full marketplace board and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Created by the state Legislature in 2013, the marketplace certifies the plans sold on the state's exchange and helps people enroll.
Using money from a federal grant, the agency last year budgeted $2.5 million for a marketing effort, carried out by Little Rock advertising firm CJRW, that included television and radio commercials, signs and messages on social media outlets.
Despite those efforts, the 70,621 Arkansans who were enrolled in non-Medicaid plans on the exchange as of Feb. 1 of this year, just after the end of open enrollment for 2017 coverage, fell short of the 73,989 who had been enrolled a year earlier.
Still, marketplace spokesman Alicia McCoy said enrollment in Arkansas fared better than in some other states.
During the campaign, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump "said he was going to do away with the [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act], so I think a lot of people were hesitant to sign up," McCoy said.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, 268,391 Arkansans, or about 9 percent of the population, lacked insurance during all of 2015, compared to 287,230 a year earlier.
The $1.25 million the marketplace has budgeted for marketing this year will come from a fee the agency collects from insurers that sell plans on the exchange.
Less money is needed than last year because much of the advertising content has already been created, McCoy said.
The open enrollment period this year for coverage starting in 2018 is also just 45 days, ending Dec. 15. The previous period lasted three months, from Nov. 1, 2016, to Jan. 31, 2017.
The annual sign-up period is the time under the 2010 federal health care law when most people who buy coverage on their own, rather than through an employer, can enroll or change plans.
The marketplace's marketing effort will also target about 60,000 Arkansans who are now in Medicaid-funded plans but would be moved off next year under a plan submitted to the federal government for approval by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in June.
That plan would limit eligibility for the state's Medicaid expansion, known as Arkansas Works, to Arkansans with incomes of up to the poverty level, instead of up to 138 percent of the poverty level.
Most of those who lose their Medicaid eligibility would become eligible for tax credit subsidies to help them buy coverage on the exchange.
The state Department of Human Services plans to begin moving those affected off of Arkansas Works at a rate of about 5,000 a month starting Jan. 1. They would qualify for 60-day special enrollment periods allowing them to enroll through the exchange.
McCoy said $800,000 of the $1.25 million marketing budget will go toward educating former Arkansas Works enrollees and others about their options after open enrollment ends.
As part of that effort, Meadors said the marketplace should work with the Human Services Department, as well as doctors, hospitals, employers and others.
"We almost have to look at this as prior to the invention of websites and everything else," because many people losing coverage may not have Internet access, Meadors said.
Metro on 08/26/2017