{"id":1526,"date":"2013-09-10T07:17:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T12:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2021-09-08T15:08:50","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T20:08:50","slug":"health-exchange-payment-options-now-available-for-unbanked-arkansans-and-mississippians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/public-policy\/the-un-and-underbanked\/health-exchange-payment-options-now-available-for-unbanked-arkansans-and-mississippians\/","title":{"rendered":"Opciones de pago del mercado de seguros m\u00e9dicos ahora disponibles para los residentes de Arkansas y Misisipi que no tienen cuenta bancaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May 2013, Jackson Hewitt released a report<\/a>\u00a0showing nearly 8 million uninsured Americans who qualified for health insurance premium payment assistance would be unable to do so because they are unbanked, meaning they do not have a checking or savings account. Of those 8 million Americans, 123,333 would have been Arkansans and 166,768 would have been Mississippians. And because these people are unbanked, it also meant that the limited payment methods accepted by insurers for premiums would have been quite an obstacle for eligible individuals acquiring and maintaining their health insurance coverage.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s good news\u2026<\/p>\n

On June 19th, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published proposed rules<\/a> in the Federal Register stating that qualified health plan issuers must accept a number of payment formats so individuals without a bank account will have options for paying monthly premiums. \u00a0In July 2013, Southern Bancorp Community Partners joined other members of the Assets & Opportunity Network<\/a>, supported by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), in signing a comment letter<\/a> responding to CMS\u2019s proposed rules. Southern Bancorp Community Partners serves as the Lead State Organization<\/a> for Arkansas.<\/p>\n

In response to the proposed rules and heightened advocacy for low-income consumers, the Obama administration last week stated it will require issuers to allow various forms of payment in the health insurance exchanges. \u00a0The final rule mandates insurance companies accept the following as payments in the individual market: paper checks, cashier\u2019s checks, money orders, pre-paid debit cards, electronic funds transfer from a bank account, and an automatic deduction from a credit or debit card.<\/a>[1] Providing these options will allow unbanked individuals to acquire health insurance coverage and not prevent them from accessing coverage solely due to the inability to make their payment.<\/p>\n

Southern Bancorp Community Partners applauds these changes as another step toward strengthening family economic security. To learn more about unbanked Arkansans and Mississippians who can now make health insurance payments through the exchanges, please read our previous blog post here<\/a> or contact Tamika Edwards at tamika.edwards@staging.southernpartners.org.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

[1] Varney, S. (2013). \u201cHHS will allow \u2018unbanked\u2019 people to use prepaid debit cards on exchanges.\u201d Kaiser Health News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May 2013, Jackson Hewitt released a report\u00a0showing nearly 8 million uninsured Americans who qualified for health insurance premium payment assistance would be unable to do so because they are unbanked, meaning they do not have a checking or savings account. Of those 8 million Americans, 123,333 would have been Arkansans and 166,768 would have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-policy","category-the-un-and-underbanked"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20755,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/20755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southernpartners.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}