Health Care Advocates Rally To Encourage Uninsured To Sign Up

Health care groups supporting the Affordable Care Act staged a “Day of Action” Tuesday to remind people who haven’t enrolled yet of some approaching deadlines.

As of the end of December, 40,000 people in Wisconsin have signed up for health insurance. The numbers for January’s enrollment are expected soon.

Kevin Kane is the lead organizer for Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

“There’s been a huge exponential jump since health care reform started in Wisconsin, so we expect there to be a pretty substantial jump,” Kane said. “But there’s concerns we’re not going to be as good as, say, Minnesota or Illinois, who are literally trying to make the law work. And here we are, a state that has spent the least of any state to educate the public.”

As part of the “Day of Action,” Citizen Action and Organizing for Action held a sort of pep rally in Appleton. They asked people who have successfully gotten into a plan to encourage friends and relatives who haven’t signed up yet to do so. Sarah Conklin is with Organizing for Action. She says a big deadline is approaching on Saturday: “You have to enroll by the 15th of this month to be covered by the first of next month. The final cutoff is the end of March.”

The next enrollment deadline is March 31st. After that, those who have yet to sign up will have to wait for open enrollment later this year, unless they experience a “life event” like a marriage, divorce or job loss.

Citizen Action estimates there are a half million uninsured people in Wisconsin.