Over the Thanksgiving holiday, 136 people completed applications for a health insurance plan sold by Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative.
The number of completed applications — almost as many as the health insurer received in all of October — is a sign that the Obama administration has made headway in fixing the problems with the healthcare.gov website.
But the number of completed applications — 878 as of Monday compared with 742 on Nov. 27 — indicates the challenges ahead in enrolling people for coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
The federal website continues to have problems more than two months after its disastrous launch and fixes remain.
"It's better than where we were," said Bob De Vita, chief executive officer of Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative. "It's not where we need to be."
The push to help tens of thousands of people in the Milwaukee area and Wisconsin sign up for coverage now has lost much of the past two months.
How that affects how many people gain coverage next year probably will never be known. But the push to enroll people — always a challenge — clearly is off to a slow start.
As of Dec. 2, Arise Health Plan, an affiliate of WPS Health Insurance, had received 436 completed applications from the federal marketplace, said Ellen Foley, a WPS spokeswoman.
That included 152 applications received in the past week.
"Apparently the numbers are popping," Foley said.
Numbers not complete
The numbers released by Common Ground Healthcare and Arise don't include paper applications for plans sold by brokers and agents or sold directly by the health insurers.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin and Molina Healthcare — the two other health insurers selling plans on the marketplace in the Milwaukee area — declined to disclose the number of completed applications they have received.
People who buy health insurance on their own and who are not eligible for subsidies, in the form of tax credits, can buy health plans outside the marketplace and are not affected by the problems.
De Vita noted that Common Ground Healthcare and other health insurers, as well as brokers, can determine if someone is eligible for a tax credit, and if they are not, can sign up someone for a health plan.
The deadline for coverage starting on Jan. 1 is Dec. 23. The deadline to receive the federal subsidies is March 31.
Adults with incomes below the federal poverty threshold — $11,490 for one person — will be eligible for coverage under BadgerCare Plus, the state's largest Medicaid program.
Under a proposal by Gov. Scott Walker now before the Legislature, their coverage would start on April 1.
People eligible for coverage through BadgerCare Plus can apply at any time next year.
Most of the people seeking help from the City of Milwaukee Health Department to sign up for coverage are eligible for BadgerCare Plus, said Sarah DeRoo, a spokeswoman for the department.
That, too, has been the case at Progressive Community Health Centers.
Progressive has helped 371 people sign up for coverage since Oct. 1, said Sarah Bailey, a spokeswoman. Of those, 22 will get coverage through a private health plan sold on the marketplace and 227 will get coverage through BadgerCare Plus.
Traffic surge
The health center's counselors had few problems with the healthcare.gov website last week, Bailey said. But they did run into problems on Monday because of the surge in traffic on the site after the Obama administration said most of the problems had been fixed.
The Milwaukee Health Department and the four community health centers in Milwaukee added staff to help people sign up for coverage.
In all, roughly 120 people in Milwaukee County have been trained as "certified application counselors," said Joy Tapper, executive director of the Milwaukee Health Care Partnership, a coalition that includes the five health systems in Milwaukee County.
The problems with the healthcare.gov website have slowed the efforts to get people to sign up for coverage, Tapper said.
She expects that to change this month.
"Activity really has picked up in the past two weeks," she said.
The partnership, which has been involved in organizing the push to help people get coverage, has held off on aggressively trying to reach people until the website was working, Tapper said. A number of events are planned for next year.
Without question, the number of people signing up for coverage will need to increase significantly in the next few months if the Affordable Care Act is to expand coverage in the Milwaukee area. And even supporters of the law acknowledge the problems have been a setback.
"Would I like it to be different?" De Vita said. "Yes."
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