The nonprofit, nonpartisan group Enroll America plans a “national day of action” on March 23 — the third anniversary of passage of the Affordable Care Act — in order to spread the word about health insurance reform.
The group is seeking hosts for “grassroots house parties” to encourage enrollment. It’ll provide the materials to those who provide the attendees.
Enroll America, based in Washington, says its mission is to ensure that all Americans are enrolled in and retain health coverage. It seeks to limit the feared “enrollment gap.”
Nelson Lichtenstein of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara, says “confusion, fear and ignorance among millions of potential beneficiaries can still doom the reform.” If too few healthy people purchase health insurance through the state exchanges, he says, “the Affordable Care Act would implode” from costs of providing for the seriously ill who are almost certain to sign up.
Enroll America says, “Experience from previous reforms suggests that there are significant barriers that prevent many people from enrolling — and staying enrolled — in health coverage.”
Some of those barriers could even come from officials. The uninsured may face barriers “in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and other Southern states, where the political establishment still stands in opposition to the health care reform law,” Lichtenstein wrote in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times.
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