An organization named Enroll America launched a campaign yesterday to educate Americans on the PPACA and the health insurance marketplaces. Enroll American is “a collaborative organization, working with partners that span the gamut of health coverage stakeholders—health insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, employers, consumer groups, faith-based organizations, civic organizations and philanthropies.” The organization has not indicated the exact budget that will be utilized to accomplish the group’s goals but has explained that “well into eight figures has been budgeted.”
America’s Health Insurance Plans (“AHIP”) is one notable organization that is supporting Enroll America. Beyond supporting Enroll America, AHIP has indicated that it anticipates that its members will begin focusing more heavily on their own enrollment efforts.
Enroll America, and other similar organizations, will be necessary if the PPACA is going to be successful in substantially reducing the number of uninsured Americans. A considerable number of individuals do not fully understand the PPACA. Additionally, a number of Americans do not even believe that the PPACA is still a law. An April 2013 poll conducted by Kaiser revealed that 42 percent of Americans surveyed were unaware that the PPACA is still a law (twelve percent believed the law was overturned by Congress, seven percent believed the law was struck down by the Supreme Court, and 23 percent were unsure whether the PPACA was still a law).
However, with insurance companies, organizations like Enroll America, the federal government, and employers—who are required by provisions of the PPACA to inform employees about the exchanges—all working to inform individuals about the health insurance exchanges, the rampant misinformation indicated by the Kaiser poll should decrease. For a discussion of why employers should expect their employees to know about and utilize the exchanges, see this post.