Obamacare insurer networks still changing with one week left to enroll

Dec. 08--With one week to left to choose a plan through the Affordable Care Act, the insurance networks keep changing for consumers in the Kansas City area.

Olathe Health, which had been shut out of all the plans available to residents of Wyandotte County and Johnson County, announced Friday that it had reached a deal with insurer Ambetter to change that.

Olathe Health spokesman Mike Jensen said via email that Ambetter's network in Kansas will include Olathe Medical Center, Miami County Medical Center, 40 clinics and 330 doctors within the Olathe Health Physicians group.

The Affordable Care Act is commonly called Obamacare

A spokeswoman for Shawnee Mission Health, which has also been shut out of all the Obamacare networks available in the Kansas City area, said Friday that it was also close to finalizing a deal with one of the area insurers.

The late additions to the network come about three weeks after the University of Kansas Health System announced it had joined Ambetter, a subsidiary of Clayton, Mo.-based Centene.

All of which makes this year's open enrollment period hard for consumers to navigate, said Sheldon Weisgrau, the director of the Health Reform Resource Project.

"I think it's very unusual and very tricky," said Weisgrau, whose group helps Kansans sign up for Obamacare plans. "In the big picture, providers, network members come in and out throughout the year. But what's different this year is the scale of that and the size and importance of the provider systems we're talking about."

Many of the area's Obamacare enrollees will be forced to choose a new insurer this year, after Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City decided to get out of the marketplaces.

Thousands of them get care regularly at Olathe Health, Shawnee Mission Health and KU. Some may be in the middle of a treatment at one of those institutions and combing through plans to find one that will continue covering it.

"That's a fundamental question," Weisgrau said. "For a lot of people, that's the most important question in choosing an insurance plan."

Weisgrau said those decisions are complicated even more when insurers post incorrect, or outdated lists of providers, as happened last month when Ambetter erroneously listed Children's Mercy Hospital providers as part of its network.

Weisgrau said it's a positive sign for consumers that the Obamacare networks in Kansas City seem to be adding providers, possibly responding to public pressure for more robust networks. But he said the last-minute changes argue against President Trump's decision to cut the open enrollment period in half.

The shortened enrollment period also makes it unlikely Kansas will meet last year's number of approximately 99,000 Obamacare enrollees, he said. Through Dec. 2, the state had about 41,000 people signed up for 2018 plans.

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