County jumps on enrollment

SANDERS COUNTY – On Saturday, March 22, officials from Clark Fork Valley Hospital, Sanders County Health Department, Mineral Regional Health Center and Missoula gathered in building two of the hospital. These people were certified application counselors and they came together in a final effort to encourage the people of Sanders County to get health care coverage.

Sanders County is behind in enrollments so the CACs showed up to educate and assist any with questions or concerns about affordable health care. Their goal is to help people meet the March 31st deadline and avoid the $95 fine at the end of the year.

Executive Assistant Russell Logan believes the lack of enrollment might be due to numerous false impressions within the community. He hopes to set the record straight.

“There were some misconceptions that people had about what health care is available to them,” Logan said. “We had several people pleasantly surprised to find that there are incentives for them to find in applying for coverage.”

According to Logan, there are several common fallacies about health care. Some of the misconceptions are the amount of subsidies that are available. Many people also have misunderstandings about tax credits and the penalty structure for not signing up for insurance.

There is an inaccurate idea that $95 is always the penalty for not having medical coverage. It can be but it can be a whole lot more. For those individuals that do not qualify, it is important to get their notification and get them into the system so when tax time comes they do not get penalized for not having insurance.

There also seems to be a lack of awareness as far as coverage is concerned.

“I think people have been pleasantly surprised with the coverages that are available through the 26 plans that are offered in Montana,” Logan said. “Some of them are not very expensive but provide very good coverage.”

The providers in the state of Montana are Blue Cross Blue Shield, Montana Health Co-op, which is new this year and Pacific Source.

Yet another misconception Logan mentioned involved the above providers. He said many people do not realize that all of the insurance companies involved are not-for-profit organizations. It is one of the federal requirements that the companies involved must be not-for-profit. They are not getting rich from the changes.

Logan was pleased with the outcome of the event and the information he was able to provide for interested parties.

“We had a couple that are facing medical needs and they have been pleasantly surprised with the coverages that are offered,” Logan said. “Even the two that I helped that did not qualify were encouraged by the information they received.”

Logan also mentioned a woman who came in with medical coverage questions and left with a plan to restructure her employment. She was semi-retired and it turned out all she had to do was work a few more hours than she already was to qualify for better coverage. With this new information and game plan, she will basically get her insurance paid for.

Those that came were serviced well at the first free-service open enrollment for affordable health care. Logan believes next year will go even smoother and will have a bigger turnout.

The free-service community event was made possible by a grant. Logan and other staff members trained extensively for many hours in order to be as knowledgeable as possible to help others with the process.

For those that missed the event, it is not too late to receive assistance. Those with questions or concerns may contact Russell Logan at Clark Fork Valley Hospital or Karen Dwyer at the Sanders County Health Department in Thompson Falls. There is also a toll free number at healthcare.gov and an application is available that way.

The cutoff to sign up is March 31st with no exceptions.

“I would encourage anyone who doesn’t have health insurance to explore it. We all need to be involved in this,” Logan said. “The more people involved in the program the more effective it is going to be. The more people involved, the more healthy people involved, the less it is going to cost.”