Many Obamacare Enrollees During Pandemic Couldn’t Pay Their Premiums – By Yuval Rosenberg (The Fiscal Times) / Sept 24 2020
Many workers who lost their jobs and health coverage because of the pandemic signed up for Obamacare plans, with a dozen states that operate their own Affordable Care Act marketplaces offering special enrollment periods to help more people get insurance. But Bloomberg Law’s Sara Hansard reports that a significant number of those new enrollees never actually got coverage — because they couldn’t pay their initial premiums:
“Almost one-third of some 20,000 Maryland enrollees from March through August didn’t activate their plans. In Washington, one-fifth of a 27,000-enrollee sample are still without coverage due to lack of payment, a sign that Obamacare subsidies may not be enough to help uninsured people get coverage in a public health emergency.
“People are enticed to sign up, but many are having trouble paying the first premium to start the coverage, Trinity College economics professor Gerardo Ruiz Sanchez found in a recent paper. Once people make the first payment, they are entitled to a 90-day grace period if they don’t make subsequent payments before being cut off.
Continue to article: https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2020/09/24/Many-Obamacare-Enrollees-During-Pandemic-Couldn-t-Pay-Their-Premiums
