Last
week,
the 2014 NAHU Capitol Conference took place in Washington DC. Close to 1000
NAHU members descended upon the Capitol, including our own 70 member CAHU
delegation from the Golden State. The similarity of advocacy issues between
NAHU and CAHU is striking; from upgrading the Federal and State Exchange
websites so agents can be tracked appropriately with their clients, to
developing a dedicated agent phone line, to including the front line army of
agents and brokers in taxpayer funded advertising to the public. CAHU delegates
provided Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and various California Congressional
Representatives a realistic assessment of the successes and failures of the
rollout of the Affordable Care Act and the Covered California Exchange. Clearly
these meetings had impact as most of our elected officials were surprised to
hear the real story.
While in Washington, we began receiving messages from our
members letting us know that Covered California call centers had stopped taking
calls from Certified Insurance Agents and were referring all calls to the newly
established dedicated agent hotline. Not
surprisingly, this overwhelmed the new phone lines and staff. CAHU leadership initiated calls to Covered
California management and by 8AM the next morning, all Covered California call
center staff were directed to resume agent assistance.
The CAHU leadership team is also working closely with
executives and management at all carriers to assess the steps being taken to
ramp up agent service departments and address the serious issues all agents are
having with the implementation of ACA changes in policies both on and off the
Exchange. Problems with call waiting
times to outright call busy disconnects are among our top line concerns. CAHU has requested an update on the status of
Agent of Record verification practices and a full accounting on the timing of
commission payments. As many CAHU members know, carriers are currently paying
commissions only on actual premium payments received from insured’s as Federal
support for subsidized insured’s has not yet been remitted to carriers CAHU is working on these issues on a daily
basis, and we will inform you as soon as we have credible information to
provide.
Here is a status report on some of the other issues:
AOR
Audit Results: CAHU has again requested Agent of Record audit
results. There continues to be file corruption issues between the Exchange and
the carriers.
Change
Request Form: The elusive Change Request Form is moving to the
final form. The previous draft was considered to be too confusing for agents or
employers to fill out and file. CAHU
suggested making it as simple as possible and using other plan forms as a
template.
SHOP: CAHU
has requested a status update on employer SHOP policies with a March 1, 2014
effective date and noted that the March billing was still not out to the
employers for payment. The response CAHU
received was that the March billing would not be finalized until this week and
that invoicing will continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future.
Covered California is processing commissions for policies
originating on January 1, 2014 and anticipates it will meet a payment date of
March 21.
Health
Insurance ID Cards: Health ID cards will continue to be a challenge.
According to Covered California, the majority of the problems they are
encountering are a result of incomplete applications.
Third
Party Authorization: CAHU has received numerous complaints from members
who called Covered California and were told they were not authorized to speak
to the agent as they did not have third party authorization in writing even
though the client was enrolled by the agent and the agent showed as the Agent
of Record. CAHU is working with Covered California to get this corrected. Any agent being told this should get the call
center employee’s name, call center location and the exact time of the call and
forward this information to comments@cahu.org.
Medi-cal
Asset Qualification Criteria: Some Covered California call
center representatives continue to be misinformed about the 2014 reformation of
the Medi-cal qualification criteria which are now based solely on income and
not on aggregate assets. Covered California is in the process of deploying a
new Medi-cal training module to assist with internal training. The Medi-Cal
training module will be posted on the agent page of the Covered California
website in the near future.
Carrier
Complaints: There has been a large uptick in carrier
complaints that CAHU has been made aware of by our members. Complaints range from service issues, 'lost'
agent information, and outright hang ups.
CAHU requested that Covered California intercede with its carrier
partners and instruct them that these items must be corrected. Covered California has agreed to work with
their carrier partners and report back to CAHU.
Until Next Week,
Sam
Sam