Why New York worked- Healthcare
Dan Goldberg
The lines on March 31 at H.H.C. facilities stretched on for hours as one New Yorker after another waited for help enrolling in a health insurance plan, trying to begin their application ahead of the midnight deadline. H.H.C. had application counselors stationed throughout the city for nearly six months. Most days the counselors went home around 4 or 5 p.m. when the clinics closed for the evening. Not that Monday night. Dozens of counselors worked with thousands of applicants right up until midnight.
Across the state, the last few weeks of enrollment saw a flurry of activity that helped New York surpass its own ambitious expectations, and cement the state’s enrollment efforts as one of the most effective in the nation.
The state health department reported that as of April 15, 960,000 New Yorkers had signed up for health insurance through the state’s exchange, and 70 percent were uninsured the year before. That means the state’s uninsured rate fell by almost a third: from 11.3 percent in 2012 to approximately 7.8 percent, the lowest it has been since records were regularly kept.
The reasons for New York’s success are varied. In sharp contrast to the national exchange set up to enroll customers in Obamacare, the state’s exchange ran smoothly after the first week; Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a supporter of the law and green-lit an aggressive advertising campaign that flooded the airwaves and subway cars with reminders to New Yorkers; the state implemented a set of policies that discouraged New Yorkers from shopping outside the exchange; a majority of state residents supported the law in the first place, removing some of the stigma the large-scale government program faced in more conservative parts of the country.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/magazine/2014/04/8544390/why-new-york-worked
