NPR has a story today which mentions something which I believe is a weakness of the Affordable Care Act--that is that most people cannot sign up for coverage once the open season ends on March 31, 2014. Instead, they will need to wait until the next open season.
This is one way that the Affordable Care Act is a lot like the insurance plans most people have at work. Every year there's an open season, and for the most part you can only buy or change plans during that open season. So if next May you haven't bought insurance and you get sick or you just decide you should have gotten insurance and you didn't — then too bad. You'll have to wait until the next open season to sign up.
http://www.npr.org/....
While there are exceptions, these are very limited.
Moving to another state, getting married or divorced, losing your job-based insurance or having your COBRA coverage end are all things that would allow you to buy insurance on the exchange outside the regular open season. Those events would be handled just as they are in an employment-based health plan.
http://www.npr.org/....
I suspect that this limited open season is going to cause public relations problems for the Affordable Care Act. I know it is hard to believe but there are many people out there who are simply not paying attention and are not aware that they can obtain insurance coverage (and potentially subsidies) under the Affordable Care Act. And I suspect that many of the people in this category are the type of people that the Affordable Care Act was designed to help--people that are the least educated and are low income.
And if these people find out about the Affordable Care Act after the open enrollment period has ended (maybe while doing their taxes or when informed by someone who has coverage through it), and they try to sign up, they will not be able to. When that happens, I suspect that we will then see negative stories about how people are being denied coverage under the Affordable Care Act and the negative health consequences to these people from this denial of coverage (i.e. someone who applied for coverage after the enrollment period after finding out that they had a serious illness like cancer who is then unable to get treatment due to lack of coverage). And I suspect that the GOP (and their mouthpieces Fox News and Rush Limbaugh) will use as another reason why "Obamacare should be repealed and replaced."
This open enrollment limitation is something that I would like to see the U.S. Congress fix (if we in fact did have a Congress that acted rationally and in the best interest of the country). But since that is not likely to happen, it is up to each of us to "spread the word" about the Affordable Care Act. So if you have a relative, friend or even someone you know causally that you suspect may not have heard about the Affordable Care Act, please make sure that they are aware of it and that they are aware of two facts: 1) they will have to pay a penalty if they don't sign up for coverage by February 15, 2014 (another fact I didn't know until the NPR story); and 2) that if they don't sign up by March 31, 2014, they will need to wait until the next open enrollment period next year.