Sept. 04--CHEYENNE -- Two agencies have been given long-term funding to continue outreach on the Affordable Care Act across Wyoming.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Wednesday that it will provide more than $600,000 to help pay for specially trained navigators, whose job it is to help get people enrolled in health insurance on the federal marketplace.
Navigators have already been working throughout the state for the past two years, relying on one-year grants to fund their work. Now, the funding is expected to last for three more years, allowing navigators to turn their focus from individual outreach to achieving more widespread awareness of the ACA.
"This enables us to make long-term plans to be able to dive deep into communities and embed this understanding and opportunity for consumers," said Tracy Brosius, executive director of the Wyoming Institute for Population Health, based in Cheyenne.
The institute has been one of the key recipients of CMS grant funding to date, and it has taken the lead by establishing Enroll Wyoming, whose navigators have helped more than 21,000 Wyomingites buy insurance through the ACA.
Brosius said those navigators will resume that work starting Nov. 1, when open enrollment for ACA health insurance resumes. But before then, and after open enrollment closes on Jan. 31, 2016, Brosius said her navigators also will be working with civic groups to help establish broader institutional knowledge of the ACA.
The idea, she said, is that by the time funding does run out for ACA outreach efforts, public understanding of the insurance marketplace should be established common knowledge, the same way programs like Social Security or disability benefits are today.
"In the last couple of years, we've been out either doing outreach events or encouraging local community members to join us," Brosius said. "As we move forward, we're going to teach others how to do that, so it's more readily available on demand."
For example, she said, the ACA allows for any low-income family with young children to buy insurance for them. Yet there are still more than 1,300 children estimated to be living without health insurance in Laramie County alone, and a more widespread understanding of how the ACA works could cut that number significantly.
"That's one in 10 of our kids in school without insurance, but how do we get to them?" Brosius said. "Now that we have this grant, we're developing a plan to meet kids and families where they're at: in their schools, in the community programs they might be involved in, their churches, all those places across the community."
Working alongside Enroll Wyoming will be the Wyoming Health Council, which subcontracts with nine family planning clinics across the state. The council was named as the second CMS grantee in Wyoming, replacing former grantee Wyoming Senior Citizens Inc.
"We provide contraception and education counseling around that, screening for breast and cervical cancer, and reproductive life planning," said Lucy Williamson, executive director of the Wyoming Health Council. "We have a network of clinics out there whose priority population is low-income. One of their key priorities is working with clients to help them get enrolled in health insurance or Medicaid."
Before this year, the Wyoming Health Council had done some work with ACA outreach and enrollment, but it did so using grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rather than CMS. And unlike Enroll Wyoming, the health council relied on certified application councilors, rather than ACA navigators, who tend to have more robust training regarding the ins and outs of the ACA.
Now that the council has been approved for CMS funding, however, Williamson said those councilors will be getting the same training that Enroll Wyoming's navigators have, allowing them to better serve their clients' needs. And like Enroll Wyoming, the health council also will be looking at long-term education, as well as immediate enrollment.
"They'll be doing outreach, as well as health fairs, that kind of thing," Williamson said. "A big emphasis is wanting to help people who have not gotten health insurance to help them access that. But another big part of it is the health literacy piece, how to use your health insurance and make sure people recognize the benefits and the importance of renewing annually."
While Enroll Wyoming's navigators will be traveling across the state, Williamson said the health council navigators will be operating out of five clinics in Cheyenne, Laramie, Rock Springs, Gillette and Cody, and extending their efforts into some of the surrounding counties, like Sublette and Uinta.
In all, Enroll Wyoming will receive $427,286 for the next year of outreach, while the Wyoming Health Council will get $178,561. Williamson noted those amounts could be different in years two and three of the grant.
"Every year, we'll have to submit a noncompeting continuation application, and the budgets could actually change," she said.
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