Conference Call
CONSUMER INFORMATION (B) SUBGROUP
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
SUMMARY
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Beth Berendt (WA), Chair of the Subgroup, convened this first open call of the re-formed Consumer Information (B)
Subgroup. Jennifer Cook called Roll of the Subgroup members and the appointed Advisory Working Group
members.
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Beth introduced herself and Angela Nelson (MO) who will be serving as Vice-Chair. John Hamje (WA) will also be
assisting on this Subgroup. She stated that the Subgroup would be meeting in-person at the NAIC Spring National
Meeting in Houston.
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Beth noted that we were in unprecedented times with the implementation of health reform, regardless of the various
state approaches. It is clear that all states will face great challenges in assisting consumers with the complicated
landscape. The Working Group held two regulator-only conference calls to discuss how to best provide assistance
that can be tailored by the states to best assist their consumers in navigating this challenging landscape. There is
limited time to do this, and there are many consumers still unaware of the huge changes that will occur.
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Beth noted that in Washington they believe that 90-95% of the plans will be non-grandfathered, which means that
for almost everyone, their plans will change.
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After discussion with the states, Beth stated that the Subgroup was interested in putting together materials to help
states this summer help consumers navigate the landscape. This information could be tailored by states and posted
on websites, could be used as training materials, could be shared with exchanges and call centers, etc.
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Angela agreed and also recognized the challenges that state regulators face in terms of being limited in what they
could provide at this point.
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Bonnie Burns (California Health Advocates) suggested asking SHIPs what materials they used with the roll out of
Medicare Part D. Beth said that she had requested that states submit whatever information they had produced on
health care reform that might be helpful to the Working Group. Bonnie said that with Part D, the biggest questions
consumers had were in understanding what the new product was, and that there were problems with inconsistent
messaging within the same state. Bonnie thinks it is very important that there be a consistent message throughout a
state. Beth agreed that there is a fear that consumers will get lost within the system because parts of the system will
be not know about the rest of the system (i.e. Medicaid eligibility).
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Lisa Reid (NM) said that she thought that the NAIC should coordinate the efforts of each state. Beth pointed out
that this Subgroup would be the main NAIC effort, and that it was important to acknowledge limited resources and
try not to do too many things.
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Bonnie suggested expanding the information available on the NAIC website to help consumers navigate the
different states. Marty Mitchell (America’s Health Insurance Plans—AHIP) suggested that a flow-chart or decision
tree would be helpful for consumers. Beth asked Marty to sketch out his idea further to better demonstrate his
suggestion and email it to Jane and Jennifer to share.
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Beth asked Bonnie to track down more information on the Part D implementation to address the issues that she
raised. Lisa also offered to help with the SHIP information.
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David Korsh (BlueCross BlueSheild Association—BCBSA) also said that healthcare.gov also had some of this type
of information available on their website, so we should coordinate with that or even link directly to those resources.
Mary Kwei (MD) agreed and said that they refer people to healthcare.gov all the time for good information. Beth
agreed that they should not duplicate work, and that they should start a resource catalog of these types of resources
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that can be simply referenced or that the Subgroup should be aware of. Subgroup members and others should
send links to these types of references to Jane and Jennifer to compile in a resource catalog ([email protected]
and [email protected]).
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Beth asked the Subgroup and the Advisory Working Group members to canvas their departments and offices
and ask for the top questions that should be included in an FAQ document to assist consumers. Each person
was encouraged to submit the top 5-10 topics to Jane ([email protected]) and Jennifer ([email protected]) by
COB Thursday, February 26, 2013. Beth and Angela said they would work with Jane and Jennifer to organize it
into topics and make assignments for Subgroup members to work on.
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Marty Mitchell also raised the issue of people with limited English proficiency, and asked whether the states have
talked about that and whether this Subgroup would work on that. Beth said she had not thought about this, but
understood that there were some requirements for navigators in terms of language translation. The current task was
to assist state insurance department staff initially but this might be something to consider in the long-term after the
short term goals are achieved. Beth said that the group should consider what needs to be done in the short term and
agreed to put together a list of things for the long-term and put them in a “parking lot,” for consideration should this
group still be convened to consider those tasks in the long-run.
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A call will be scheduled in a couple weeks from now.
© 2013 National Association of Insurance Commissioners
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