Dec 9 2013
Officials with Covered California said they gave insurance agents the contact information of thousands of people who went online but didn't enroll in coverage as part of a pilot program to help people sign up by Dec. 23.
Los Angeles Times: Covered California Gave Consumers' Contact Information To Agents
Raising concerns about consumer privacy, California's health exchange has given insurance agents the names and contact information for tens of thousands of people who went online to check out coverage but didn't ask to be contacted. The Covered California exchange said it started handing out this consumer information this week as part of a pilot program to help people enroll ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by Jan. 1 (Terhune, 12/6).
The Associated Press/Washington Post: Calif. Health Exchange Shares Data Without Consent
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, says the information was shared to ease the process for consumers. The exchange was set up in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. It has been struggling with a surge in applications ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have insurance in place by Jan. 1 (12/7).
In related news -
California Healthline: Forum Explores Other States' Handling Of Exchange, Medicaid Enrollment
But California is not the only success story. Other states have established robust exchanges and yesterday officials from some of them talked about what they've been accomplishing in their own exchanges. "With Affordable Care Act-related enrollment, states have had nine weeks of experience," said Catherine Hess, managing director for coverage and access at the National Academy for State Health Policy, a co-sponsor of yesterday's online forum. … Hess pointed out that a big part of the open enrollment period, among the states that have created exchanges, includes successful expansion of Medicaid -- Medi-Cal in California (Gorn, 12/6).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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