Posted on 09/24/2013 9:51:21 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
With open enrollment for the national Health Insurance Marketplace beginning October 1, volunteers with Insure Central Texas are preparing to guide the area's roughly 120,000 eligible uninsured through the process.
"We'll have 19 work stations set up over here, cubicles where our volunteers will be working," Insure Central Texas Director Elizabeth Colvin told KVUE, pointing around a former bookstore inside Highland Mall, which will serve as one of two enrollment centers in the Austin area. Colvin says 70 volunteers, many of them veterans of parent organization Foundation Communities' free tax filing service, will soon begin work.
After receiving $11 million in federal grants for full time health care "navigators" to help enroll people in the program, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) drew criticism from many on left by requiring strict training rules in addition to federal requirements for navigators working in Texas. Operating separately from the state, Insure Central Texas relies on volunteers rather the navigators.
"Our volunteers have gone through the online federal training plus received supplemental training from us, and plus they have this tax expertise so they already know the dependents, the household size, filing status, all of those things," said Colvin. "They understand how the tax credits work. All of that really gives them the ability to help people walk through this enrollment form and navigate this new system, although they're not navigators."
Speaking to media after the enrollment center's unveiling, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) called Perry's additional training requirements for navigators "absolutely outrageous," adding that they would not go into effect until next year. Doggett suggested the use of volunteers may not insulate Insure Central Texas against the additional navigator requirements.
"It's unclear," said Doggett.
(Excerpt) Read more at khou.com ...
Idiots
once again the neo marxist in austin line up to suck Obama’s c**k and gladly receive his “happy ending”
Sounds like where the old ACORN workers went
Obama stash.
If people find out it’s free for them because of subsidies, they will sign up. If they find out it’s going to cost them money they are not paying today, they won’t. NOBODY has “extra money” these days. I predict major apathy, an underwhelming response, and a lot of “navigators” playing solitaire on their computers. To paraphrase a 60’s anti-war poster: Suppose they gave a “healthcare act” and nobody came?
How touching......Any guesses as to the, um, demographics of the applicants and the “navigators”?
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Not what you may be thinking. Austin TX is dominated by weirdos like the San Francisco bunch; very liberal, but mostly white and brown. ....At least it was that way last time I was through there years ago.
Austin, along with Houston, San Antonio and Dallas are liberal Dem centers, very PC and sanctuary cities.
Austin... LMBO!!!
Insure Central Texas gets a federal grant but gets idiots to volunteer. This whole deal is nothing but fraud. And there are republicans who are going to make just as money as Reid and Pelosi.
Do you know how the premiums are going to be paid? Do these “navigators” ask for debit or credit card numbers? When these people go online will they have to pay an upfront premium? I agree with you. If payment is required people are going to balk.
And most of the idiots in this country believe they’re going to get healthcare for free. So you know they think they’re going to get the insurance for free.
I received a letter today from the insurance broker I used years ago to find my current plan. In the letter they say how there is no added cost [well, no DIRECT cost] to me to use them (IIRC they are paid by the insurance companies). And that they will go over my needs, and provide suggestions on what plans out there (57 in my state) might best fit my needs. Then they write: “Navigators and Exchange support staff CANNOT make plan recommendations.”
In looking at our state’s healthcare website (get this - called “ilovemyplan.com”), it is a list of plans, with a pdf link to each plan. So no doing any easy comparisons. What a typical governmental bureaucratic frikkin’ mess.
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