- President Joe Biden has announced he is reopening the Affordable Care Act marketplace to help people who have lost health insurance during the COVID-19 economic downturn.
- The new enrollment period will run from Feb. 15 to May 15.
- Experts say people should go to the official ACA website and not an individual insurer’s website.
- They also urge consumers not to necessarily choose the cheapest option, because limited coverage options could actually make your healthcare costs higher.
White House officials say more than 30 million Americans have no health insurance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many are in communities of color that have been hit hard by the economic downturn.
In addition, some 900,000 workers filed for unemployment in just 1 week last month, compared to 282,000 that same week last year.
Once they lose their jobs, many people may also lose their health insurance.
Acting on a campaign promise, President Joe Biden is taking a first step to shore up and rehab the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare.
Last week, the president signed an executive order that would allow millions of the “uninsured and the underinsured” another chance to get health insurance through the federal marketplace.
“I think it’s extremely important, given that the amount of suffering during this pandemic is unreal,” said Cheryl Fish-Parcham, director of access initiatives for Families USA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer health advocacy organization.
“This is basically signaling that we need to do everything we can to provide people the opportunity to have adequate health insurance coverage in this once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis,” added Gerald Kominski, PhD, a professor of health policy and management at UCLA.
“That’s a good thing in the midst of a pandemic that currently has thousands of people hospitalized unexpectedly and approximately 3,000 people a day dying,” Kominski told Healthline. “And we’re far enough into this to know that people are not fully recovering.”
Source: healthline