Juneau’s Enroll Alaska agent Mike Clark has so far seen about 24 people, and appointments continue to come in.
After a delayed launch in Juneau, Clark started helping people sign up for health insurance at Bartlett Regional Hospital last week. “We have a backlog of about 75 people that have been wanting to get enrolled and I just see that increasing as we get closer to the December 15th cut off for January 1 starts,” he said.
Clark has seen individuals, families, and a couple small businesses owners – people from across the income spectrum.
“There are people that are eligible for subsidies, there are people that aren’t eligible for subsidies, there are people that are eligible for Medicaid, there are people that are just researching if they can get a better policy than their employer offers – a lot of shopping going on right now,” he said.
Clark said his normal schedule at Bartlett will be Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons, 1 to 5 .pm. With the holiday this week, Clark will be available for appointments on Friday afternoon.
Enroll Alaska’s Chief Operating Officer Tyann Boling said a second Juneau agent will be located at Walmart, hopefully, within the next two weeks, “Next week is the week that the website is supposed to be functioning better and we are going to be making a trip to Juneau and getting one of our other gents up and on board and then he will be working at the Walmart.”
Boling said healthcare.gov is still experiencing problems, making it difficult to sign people up for an insurance plan.
Clark said he’s had some positive experiences with the website but hasn’t completed an enrollment in Juneau yet.
Lisa Phu is a reporter at KTOO in Juneau.
