As Connector closes doors, users urged to re-enroll

The Hawaii Health Connector ceased operations Friday, but the state plans to temporarily hire some Connector staffers to boost Obamacare enrollment for 2016.

Gov. David Ige’s office said Friday the state will temporarily hire a number of operations staff from the defunct nonprofit health insurance exchange — though it did not say how many — to help with the 2016 open-enrollment period, which began on Nov. 1 and ends on Jan. 31.

Hawaii residents insured through the Connector have to re-enroll via the federal exchange at healthcare.gov by Dec. 15 to avoid losing coverage on Jan. 1.

About 22 full-time Connector employees were laid off this week, while another 20 temporary outreach workers also lost their jobs.

The Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services, the U.S. agency in charge of Obamacare, said as of the end of Nov. 4, 450 people in Hawaii had re-enrolled for coverage via healthcare.gov.

The state said there are 24,000 residents currently in Obamacare plans. Connector officials previously put that number at nearly 40,000. Either way, that means thousands of people will likely lose coverage on Jan. 1 if they don’t re-enroll in the next week.

“The state team, in consultation with the State Procurement Office, has been executing emergency contracts to procure the services of the same or similar marketplace assistance organizations and navigators so that statewide consumer outreach and enrollment support will continue through the 2016 open enrollment,” said Laurel Johnston, Ige’s deputy chief of staff, in an email.

The state also is scrambling to contract language-interpretation services locally for the 7,500 Micronesians who lost coverage under Medicaid, the state health insurance program for low-income residents, and were automatically enrolled into an Obamacare replacement plan early this year.

“The (Connector) staff and state team have made several requests of federal agencies managing the federal call center for additional resources to assist this particular population during the 2016 open enrollment,” Johnston said. “Due to the untimely transition of the administration of HHC functions to the state, the state team is currently working with the governor and the director of finance to determine how essential functions can be maintained, while transferring the federal grant administration and grant allocation to the state. The state will pursue federal grant funds to the fullest extent possible, in an effort to reimburse the state for expenditures made related to the transition and ongoing essential functions.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees health insurance exchanges, determined that Hawaii was not in compliance with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Ige’s administration subsequently decided to abandon the troubled Connector, which has struggled since its launch in October 2013 to meet enrollment targets, provide satisfactory service and raise enough money to be self-sustaining. The Connector spent $130 million of $204 million in federal money to build the exchange. The Connector’s remaining grants of about $70 million will transfer to the state sometime this month.

“The state’s goal has been and continues to be two fold – compliance with the ACA so that individuals and families previously without health care coverage can access coverage — (and) preservation of the cornerstone of health care coverage in Hawaii, the Prepaid Health Care Act, that for 40 years has kept Hawaii’s uninsured rate among the lowest in our country — 10 percent or below,” Johnston said.