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The voyage of a navigator

An aspiring scholar’s inside observations on the Affordable Care Act’s rocky roll-out in North Carolina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2015

Hollie L. Tripp
Hollie L. Tripp*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina–Charlotte
*
Correspondence: Hollie L. Tripp, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 285-C Fretwell, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223. Email: htripp@uncc.edu
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Abstract

North Carolina, a federally facilitated marketplace under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), stumbled in 2013 when opening its health-insurance exchange. Trouble was easy to foresee, as North Carolina had instituted a law barring any state agency from assisting enrollment in health-insurance plans made available through the ACA. Trained workers were needed to help citizens and legal immigrants “navigate” to these plans. Some of these “navigators” could be paid with federal funds, but many others had to work as volunteers. I was one of these volunteer navigators. Much went wrong in training, staffing, and operations, but much still was accomplished. Here I report observations, share assessments, and offer suggestions for similarly complex situations.

Keywords

Affordable Care Act (ACA)health insurance marketplacehealth reformhealth literacynavigatorconsumer enrollmentchoice theory
Type
Perspective
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Fall 2015 , pp. 91 - 104
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2015 

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