The Latest on Special Enrollment Periods: An Assessment of State Approaches in 2014 and Update for 2015

Special enrollment is available to individuals who experience qualifying events allowing them to enroll into marketplace coverage. A new issue brief co-authored by CHIR’s Sandy Ahn and Kevin Lucia, along with authors from the Urban Institute, found that special enrollment systems and procedures were still a work in progress in five state-based marketplaces last year. Sandy and Kevin also discuss additional SEPs available this year.

After a Slow Start, Federal Small Business Health Insurance Marketplace Offers New and Improved Functions

With intense focus on enrollment in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, enrollment through the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) has flown under the radar by comparison. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, Kevin Lucia, Justin Giovannelli and Sean Miskell discuss early challenges for the SHOP as well as recent improvements.

Critiquing the Performance as the Curtain Closes on OE2

The second open enrollment period (often called OE2) under the Affordable Care Act has come to its formal close. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, provides her review of OE2 – and some tips on how the marketplaces could improve their performance for next year.

Our Heartfelt Thanks to Affordable Care Act Navigators and Assisters – and a New Resource

We’ve wrapped up the Affordable Care Act’s second open enrollment season and sign-ups exceeded expectations, in large part thanks to the hard work of navigators and assisters. As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project, navigators in five states send us their toughest and most complicated cases. To help others facing similar issues, we’ve created a new compilation of our most frequently asked questions during open enrollment. The Georgetown technical assistance team shares it here.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the individual blog post authors and do not represent the views of Georgetown University, the Center on Health Insurance Reforms, any organization that the author is affiliated with, or the opinions of any other author who publishes on this blog.