Frederica Freyberg:

Consumers can start shopping for coverage on the federally run health insurance exchange starting tomorrow, when the second open enrollment period begins. The website, healthcare.gov, so riddled with problems this time last year, is revamped and taking applications. Wisconsin expert Bobby Peterson is executive director of ABC for Health, a non-profit public interest law firm which provides legal services and support for consumers. He joins us now. Thanks very much for doing so.

Bobby Peterson:

Great to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, so the second year of open enrollment begins on Saturday. I took a spin through that website and it’s much more user-friendly, it seems like, right now. But there seem to be so many choices.

Bobby Peterson:

Yeah.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are there still navigators out there for people to get help?

Bobby Peterson:

Yes, there are. There are navigators and there are certified application counselors to provide some assistance to consumers. But, you know, at some point there are choices that need to be made by the individual and there’s a lot of options out there. So it’s important to do your homework and to look at what some of those options are.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so these navigators, are any of them kind of built in in live chat ways on that website? Or do– How do you find them?

Bobby Peterson:

There’s online support available through healthcare.gov. You can call up and get some support. A lot of the navigators are based at community health centers, health departments. So that chat function is not really available for them.

Frederica Freyberg:

Have you found, yourself and some of your clients, that in fact this revamped website is obviously much better?

Bobby Peterson:

Yeah. How could it be worse?

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah.

Bobby Peterson:

It looks like it’s running a lot more smoothly. You can do some window-shopping. And you can evaluate your options really, go forward and backward, before you have to pull the trigger.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what’s the status with people who, under Wisconsin's Medicaid program, lost BadgerCare coverage and were supposed to get coverage through healthcare.gov? What’s their status?

Bobby Peterson:

You know, I don’t know if anyone knows exactly what happened to all those folks. You know, we talk about an eligibility corn maze. The corn’s cut, but they’re still lost out there somewhere, I think. People are struggling to get through the system and find coverage. Open enrollment provides an opportunity for them because of all the publicity to get in and get some coverage.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does the federal coverage or the coverage that people can access through the exchanges end up being unaffordable for a lot of people who are uninsured?

Bobby Peterson:

I’m not– For some people, yes, at the lower ends, you know, just around 100% of the FPL. It’s not like it’s a magic number, that 100% and above you're not poor and below that you are poor. And that’s just such an artificial distinction. Some of those folks at the low end, yes, it is expensive to try to get that coverage.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about people in the mid end, or you know all the way up to the top, for people who can get kind of subsidized coverage through these exchanges? Because you hear a lot of criticism about how expensive this is.

Bobby Peterson:

You know, at least from the people that we talk to who are able to get them, you know, identify options for them. Coverage is affordable. I think a lot of people are really grateful because of the elimination of the preexisting condition clauses. It really opens doors for a lot of people that in the past weren’t able to get coverage affordably.

Frederica Freyberg:

The penalties for not having insurance kind of go up year by year.

Bobby Peterson:

They do.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are those penalties encouraging people to get insurance?

Bobby Peterson:

Yeah, I think as they go up higher and higher. Some people may have brushed them off last year, this past year. It'll be a little more pain this year to brush them off. So it encourages people to get coverage.

Frederica Freyberg:

The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that fewer people than expected will sign up in this coming year, 2015. What will that do to the cost of the program or the program altogether?

Bobby Peterson:

Well, if it’s fewer people than were anticipated, that means that it may be that there will be less cost to the program, maybe more cost to the overall system because people that are currently uninsured that get care, a cost-shifting phenomenon will continue where they might not be able to afford to pay their bills. That gets shifted to everybody else. So system-wide we could see costs go up a little bit. I think for the program it may go down a bit.

Frederica Freyberg:

And what about insurance companies themselves? I mean, are they taking part at the levels that were expected?

Bobby Peterson:

Yes, and it’s increasing. I think that, you know, there was — People that weren’t really ready to dip their toe in the first year, participation is greater. And we’re seeing that the costs are not skyrocketing as a lot of people had feared or warned, but we’re really seeing a leveling off of cost. And I think that’s because of the greater transparency. You see plans competing against one another in the marketplace. You have choices. And so that will help drive down some of the costs.

Frederica Freyberg:

A lot of people, mostly Republicans, including our own governor, want to work to get rid of so-called Obamacare. There’s a law suit right now talking about if your state doesn’t have an exchange, then, you know, the people who sign up in your state might not be eligible for subsidies. What do you know about any of that? And does that discourage people? You know, all of this talk about getting rid of it.

Bobby Peterson:

Yeah, I mean, I think it does. And you know, I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I don’t want to go back to the days where preexisting conditions were levied against people, where people were in small, individual groups. So all the talk about pulling Obamacare out by the roots, it’s just not really helpful. I mean, I think that we need to improve the process, improve the system in bipartisan ways. You know, the goal of getting everybody covered is a really good one, not only for our state, but for our country.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Bobby Peterson, thanks very much.

Bobby Peterson:

Good to be here.