Jeremiah Samples Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

State Medicaid numbers up since expansion

While state officials say they’re not sure how many West Virginians have signed up for private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act last week, more than 50,000 are now covered by Medicaid under the state’s expansion of the program.Those numbers come from just the first week of enrollment under the ACA’s health care exchange.

Department of Health and Human Resources Assistant Secretary Jeremiah Samples said the state does not yet have access to the number of West Virginians who have signed up for health coverage through the federal exchange, but 1,932 people have signed up for Medicaid through the state internet portal called inRoads.

Another 47,752 West Virginians found they were eligible for Medicaid by visiting their county DHHR offices and signing up in person.

Samples said last week more than 45,000 people were enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program before the exchange opened through auto enrollment letters sent out and returned to the DHHR.

That puts the number of West Virginians newly enrolled in Medcaid at nearly 100,000, Samples said exceeding the state’s expectations for the first week.

W.Va. health exchange enrollment numbers expected next week

After an influx on inquiries in the first 24 hours of the health care exchange, an official at the state Department of Health and Human Resources says the federal government is working to fix bugs and increase capacity both online and at their national call center.
Assistant to the Secretary at the DHHR Jeremiah Samples said Thursday the federal government did experience some technical issues in the first 24 hours of the online exchange. He accounted the issues to the large number of Americans looking for information about health care coverage.

“The feds are saying they’ve had 7 million independent hits from across the country on the federal exchange itself,” Samples said, but added they’ve worked to increase capacity on the site to account for the numbers.

As for the federal call center, a second option for people looking to sign up for health coverage, Samples said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services received more than 295,000 calls the first day, but have also added phones lines to decrease the wait time.

“The first day we were hearing wait times as long as a half an hour,” he said, “and they’re saying that the wait times at the call center have been cut in half since the launch, especially over the last 24 hours.”

As far as the number of West Virginians who have taken advantage of the exchange, the state won’t receive those numbers until early next week, but Samples could say a majority of people using in-person assistors at county DHHR offices are of lower incomes and find they are eligible for Medicaid under the state’s program expansion.

“That’s probably because there’s more experience in that low income population dealing with the DHHR offices,” he said.

As for the large number of not just West Virginians, but Americans who have shown interest in the health care marketplace, Samples said he’s not surprised about the surge in interest.

“We anticipated that there would be three major rushes to assess what coverage was available by the public, Samples said. “Here October 1st. We also anticipate around January 1 because that’s when the coverage actually begins and then towards March 31 toward the end of the open enrollment period.”

He based that assessment on the annual trend the DHHR sees during open enrollment for Medicaid.

Health care exchange begins enrollment in W.Va.

West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources has been working for months to organize their federal-state partnered health insurance exchange beginning enrollment on October 1.

Likened to the travel website Expedia, the exchange will allow consumers to go online, compare plans from private insurance providers and choose the one that’s best for them, but the site will also determine your eligibility for coverage on state programs like Medicaid.
For the state of West Virginia, the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act meant new requirements, like establishing a health care exchange, but for consumers, Assistant Secretary for the state Department of Health and Human Resources Jeremiah Samples said the ACA means options. Options for insurance coverage and providers.

Those options, however, aren’t as abundant here as in many other states.

As West Virginians begin to navigate the healthcare exchange looking for insurance to cover themselves and their families, the plans they have to choose from will all come from one provider: Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield.

“Private insurance companies made the decision to not proceed with offering coverage on the exchange and there’s a number of reasons for that. Our market is not very large so it’s not as attractive to many insurance companies, and there’s also challenges to the paradigm shift from the health insurance laws,” Samples said.

“That exposes insurance companies to risks that they’ve never had to deal with before and so there are a lot of challenges there that many insurance companies felt they were not in a position to precede.”

Samples said even though there is only one private insurance provider, Blue Cross Blue Shield will still provide a variety of plan options at different cost levels.

But some West Virginians will take a different path to coverage. Samples estimated more than 130,000 West Virginians will find through the exchange they are eligible for Medicaid.

The DHHR sent out eligibility letters to more than 118,00 of those West Virginians to allow them to enroll by simply checking a box to agree to the program and then mailing the form back in to the state.

“We already have about 45,000 folks that have sent those letters in,” Samples said. “That’s 45,000 people that didn’t have insurance before, 45,000 people that will not be coming in to the county office bogging down the systems using our resources. It will also be the most streamlined process by which that consumer can go through to have their eligibility determined.”

Those individuals became eligible for coverage when Governor Tomblin announced Medicaid’s expansion in May, covering individuals earning between 17 and 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Many of those are SNAP, more commonly known as food stamp, participants and parents whose children were already covered through the state.

But if you’re still not sure where you fall, whether you are eligible for Medicaid, or want to find an insurance plan to fit your budget, Samples said the process starts online at healthcare.gov, with a phone call to the federal call center, through a private insurance agent, or at your local DHHR county office.

“Each DHHR office will have an in-person assistor embedded into it. An in-person assistor will be trained on how to provide consumers information about private health insurance,” Samples said. “So, for example, if a consumer wants to know, what is a co-pay? What is co-insurance? What do these terms mean to me? Than that in-person assistor will be able to provide them with some support as they go through the exchange.”

Open enrollment through the health care exchange begins October 1 and ends March 31. Health insurance bought through the exchange goes into effect January 1.

The website to enroll is www.healthcare.gov.