Elizabeth Lukanen, State Health Access Data Assistance Center
While millions of Americans have newly gained health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is evidence that coverage alone does not necessarily translate into access to health care. This memo, prepared by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC), provides background information on health insurance literacy, summarizes the research around current consumer knowledge, and offers recommendations for marketplaces on how to build on it.
Additionally, the State Network has compiled a library of health insurance literacy materials developed by four marketplaces (below). These resources are intended as examples of what marketplaces can provide to consumers and to groups working on improving health insurance literacy and boosting enrollment.
As states continue the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement and redetermining their enrollees, states across the country have reported scams asking consumers for financial or personal information are prevalent. This expert perspective provides recommendations on what state communications and digital teams can do to mitigate online scams and protect official sources of information.
The unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement represents the largest nationwide coverage transition since the Affordable Care Act, with significant health equity implications. Given the intense focus on coverage transitions during the unwinding, some states have initiated plans to publish a data dashboard to monitor progress. To date, the District of Columbia and 15 states have published unwinding data in a visual dashboard format (this does not include states with pre-existing enrollment dashboards that don’t specifically identify unwinding cohorts). This expert perspective now includes an interactive map with the links to all the dashboards and states publishing CMS unwinding reports. SHVS will continue to update the EP and map as more states publish their unwinding data.