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HHS slashes funding to some ACA navigator groups by up to 85 percent
Source: Washington Post
HHS slashes funding to some ACA navigator groups by up to 85 percent
By Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein September 14 at 12:00 PM
Health and Human Services officials have informed grass-roots groups that assist with enrollment under the Affordable Care Act that their funding will be reduced by as much as 85 percent, a move that could upend outreach efforts across the country.
The groups, which fund organizations known as “navigators,” had been braced for the cuts since the Trump administration announced two weeks ago that it would shrink overall program funding by 41 percent and slash the department’s ACA advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million. At the time of the announcement, HHS officials said the outreach wasted taxpayers’ money.
But advocates of the navigator program, including congressional Democrats and some Republicans from rural states, said the deep cuts would undermine any effort to help consumers get insurance coverage once open enrollment begins on Nov. 1. And in some instances, the funding reductions made official late Wednesday night were much deeper than 41 percent, raising questions about some state programs’ viability and the fairness of the administration’s method for deciding how much money each group gets.
“There is no way you can run what we had on $328,000,” said Sarah Sessoms of Insure Georgia, which was hit with a massive decrease from the $2.2 million it received last year. The HHS email arrived at 11:53 p.m. Wednesday, and “I thought — it was disbelief — that something had to be wrong.”
-snip-
By Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein September 14 at 12:00 PM
Health and Human Services officials have informed grass-roots groups that assist with enrollment under the Affordable Care Act that their funding will be reduced by as much as 85 percent, a move that could upend outreach efforts across the country.
The groups, which fund organizations known as “navigators,” had been braced for the cuts since the Trump administration announced two weeks ago that it would shrink overall program funding by 41 percent and slash the department’s ACA advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million. At the time of the announcement, HHS officials said the outreach wasted taxpayers’ money.
But advocates of the navigator program, including congressional Democrats and some Republicans from rural states, said the deep cuts would undermine any effort to help consumers get insurance coverage once open enrollment begins on Nov. 1. And in some instances, the funding reductions made official late Wednesday night were much deeper than 41 percent, raising questions about some state programs’ viability and the fairness of the administration’s method for deciding how much money each group gets.
“There is no way you can run what we had on $328,000,” said Sarah Sessoms of Insure Georgia, which was hit with a massive decrease from the $2.2 million it received last year. The HHS email arrived at 11:53 p.m. Wednesday, and “I thought — it was disbelief — that something had to be wrong.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hhs-slashes-funding-to-some-aca-navigator-groups-by-more-than-60-percent/2017/09/14/729c394c-9957-11e7-b569-3360011663b4_story.html
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