Health Insurance Marketplace
This year the State Library of Pennsylvania is setting some priorities and putting focus on topics that are important at the federal, state, and local level. One of those areas is health. With the beginning of the Affordable Care Act (ACT) and the Health Insurance Marketplace, we want to make sure you have all of the information you need to support your communities. We are also going to continue to find general health resources and training to support you and the people you serve.
The information we send will be organized in Health Issues to help you keep track of what we send out. Health Issues will be sent out via the Compendium, WebJunction and listservs.
We hope this will be useful, and want to hear from you about what works and what we need to tweak to make better. Enjoy Health Issue 1!
HEALTH ISSUE 1: PA Demographics and Insurance Marketplace Information for Staff and Patrons
Pennsylvania Demographics for the Uninsured
As we get ready to support the people who need help finding information about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Insurance Marketplace, we thought it might be useful to know how many uninsured people are in Pennsylvania. According to CMS, there are a total of 1,242,350 uninsured people.
This link provides the number of uninsured totals by county. The totals are by Public-Use Microdata Area (PUMA), which is an area within the state that contains at least 100,000 residents. In sparsely populated areas, PUMAs are comprised of one or more neighboring counties to total 100,000. Allegheny County represents about ten PUMAs within the county. We hope this data will help you understand how many people in your regional may be seeking assistance with finding information.
Health Insurance Marketplace - Affordable Care Act
The State Library of Pennsylvania is partnering with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), PaLA PA Forward and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to support libraries and the uninsured residents of Pennsylvania with information on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Health Insurance Marketplace. There is information available now that will be helpful to you and the people you serve.
Training and Materials for Staff
There is a great deal of information on this site for the libraries to use such as training materials, publications and articles about the Marketplace.
Online Information for Your Patrons Now
There are two links that you should consider making more accessible by adding links to your website now. The sites below are designed to help people understand the Insurance Marketplace and the choices available to them.
- General Information about the Insurance Marketplace
Marketplace and Health Insurance consumer site with general information and a place for people to sign up for email updates. - Consumer Accounts - Patrons Can Create Now
The federal government is encouraging consumers to visit the Insurance Marketplace and create an account now, so that when it opens on October 1st for enrollment, people will already be signed up.
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