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Cleveland.com
Obamacare's
insurance
exchange for Ohio to launch without navigators to guide customers
By Robert Higgs, Northeast
Ohio Media Group
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The
federally run marketplace offering Ohioans health insurance plans
opens for business beginning Tuesday, but Ohio will not have any of
the so-called navigators trained and in place to guide people through
their options.
The organizations that will
provide the navigators must first be certified to handle the work,
and none had been certified as of Friday, said Chris Brock, a
spokesman for the Ohio Department of Insurance.
Navigators also must be
trained, and the first wave of trained navigators will not become
available until at least mid-October, according to the Ohio
Association of Foodbanks, the lead organization in a large consortium
of groups that will provide navigators.
But the Department of
Insurance is unconcerned. And the head of the association of
foodbanks says it will be a good time for people to start doing their
homework.
“A lot of this is about
managing the expectations and ... getting our current staff through
training,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the food
bank association.
“I think that if
anything, there is just such a media frenzy, I’m likening it to
Y2K,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “The only thing that happens on Oct. 1
is that the federal marketplace comes online.”
The marketplace is part of
the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,
commonly known as Obamacare. Beginning Tuesday, those who need to buy
individual policies -- people who do not already have health
insurance through their jobs or some other source -- will be able to
go to the online marketplace and see what plans are available for
Ohio.
The navigators also are
included in Obamacare. They are intended to help guide people through
the plans, explaining costs and differences. Navigators will present
information on all plans available, unlike brokers and agents who
generally have information on the plans that they sell.
There are a handful of
organizations coordinating navigators, but the Ohio Association of
Foodbanks is by far the largest. It operates the Ohio Benefit Bank, a
large online service that, in partnership with the state and nine of
its agencies, four federal agencies and more than 1,100 faith-based
and community organizations, connects Ohio’s families with work
support programs and tax credits.
After the state certifies
that the organizations fit the criteria, the individual navigators
who work for them also must be cleared.
For the rest of this
article and more, go to Cleveland.com
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