PPPACA exchange group to add 2,000 in-person assisters

Enroll America, a public exchange marketing support group, says it has signed 10,000 volunteers for the 2015 open enrollment period campaign and hopes to mobilize 2,000 certified application counselors (CACs).

The group has 200 staff members in 11 states. They focus mainly on increasing Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange use in the states in which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) runs the exchange.

For the 2014 open enrollment period, Enroll America helped organize a team of about 30,000 volunteers.

The 2015 qualified health plan (QHP) open enrollment period is set to start Nov. 15 and end Feb. 15.

Enroll America leaders say they saw last year how important in-person contact was to helping consumers enroll in coverage. Exchange users who were African-American or Latino were 43 percent more likely than other users to seek in-person help, and people who had in-person help were about as twice as likely to get coverage as people who tried to enroll by themselves online, according to survey data.