Updated FAQs Help Consumers Understand the ACA Marketplaces As Third Open Enrollment Begins

Ahead of the third annual Affordable Care Act open enrollment period, the Kaiser Family Foundation has updated and expanded its searchable collection of nearly 300 Health Reform Frequently Asked Questions.

Designed to help consumers and the navigators, brokers and others who assist them, the FAQs cover a wide range of topics including eligibility for subsidies, the individual mandate to maintain health coverage and information about health plans offered through state ACA marketplaces. The FAQs also address situations affecting young adults, women, early retirees, immigrants, and people with job-based health plans. The updated collection now reflects 2016 changes in the individual mandate tax penalty, standards for affordable health plans, and eligibility for marketplace subsidies. New FAQs also describe tax forms consumers may encounter, rules for auto-renewing marketplace coverage, and tips for the self-employed and other consumers with variable incomes, who may be asked by the marketplace to provide additional income verification.

Open enrollment for the marketplaces begins Nov. 1, 2015 and runs through Jan. 31, 2016. The Foundation encourages organizations assisting consumers to link to the FAQ web page. Each question and answer may be shared individually by direct link, via Twitter and Facebook, and the Foundation (@KaiserFamFound) will be tweeting and posting to Facebook a “FAQ of the Day.”

Other resources, including the Foundation’s Health Insurance Quiz and animated video, Health Insurance Explained – The YouToons Have It Covered (also available in Spanish), help consumers understand insurance concepts, such as premiums, deductibles and provider networks. The Foundation’s Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator will be updated with 2016 premium data when they are available in the coming weeks.