Only 8,000 enroll in health plan for preexisting conditions
By Geri Aston
American Medical News
December 27, 2010As of Nov. 1, only 8,011 people were enrolled in the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, numbers from the Dept. of Health and Human Services show.
People who have been denied coverage by private insurers because of a preexisting condition and who have been uninsured for at least six months are eligible to participate in PCIP. The idea is to give patients who have no access to private coverage because of their condition a way to get insurance while they wait for the state-based health insurance exchanges to launch in 2014.
Almost 6 million Americans are potentially eligible for the program, which runs through 2013.
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/12/27/gvsa1227.htm
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
One of the highly touted transitional programs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the temporary high risk health insurance pool program designed to provide health insurance for individuals with preexisting conditions. Until the state insurance exchanges are in operation in 2014, this program provides a source of insurance coverage for eligible individuals who have been rejected by private insurers because of preexisting conditions.
How successful has the program been so far? After four months of this three and one-half year program, 99.9 percent of eligible individuals have not yet been enrolled. Only 8,011 out of about 6,000,000 eligible have.
Several explanations have been advanced as to why participation is so low, but they are trivial compared to the most fundamental reason. Our fragmented, dysfunctional health financing system based on private insurance plans will never be capable of bringing everyone in and making the premiums and out-of-pocket spending affordable. As this program demonstrates, trying to apply patches to a rickety financing infrastructure will never be adequate to provide health security for everyone.
We need to dump the crumbling financing infrastructure based on the obsolete model of private plans and replace it with the sturdy structure of an improved Medicare that covers everyone.
Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org.
As a self-employed person denied coverage and now with a tighter budget due to the recession I can say there are 2 reasons I have not yet signed up. 1) I didn’t know I could. I was under the impression that, until 2014, this provision did not come into effect. There is really not enough publicity that this benefit currently is open. 2) It would have to be very, very affordable.
Unlike Europeans, we have the sad acceptance that we don’t deserve health care if we can’t afford it. It will take a long time for that psyche to change.
Linda Furr
As one who has just now enrolled, there are many causes of delay. The first is the need to obtain a birth certificate or current passport. This delayed my enrollment by a couple of months, by which time it made sense to wait to start with the first of the year due to the annual deductible.
I have not seen much publicity for this program – I had to seek information. If people don’t know who to contact to enroll, they can’t enroll.
Finally, it is competing with the older MRMIP program and people are not allowed to transition from MRMIP to PCIP.