Enrollment in MNsure begins on Oct. 1. As that date approaches, Minnesotans, no doubt, have many questions about what healthcare is going to look like for them in 2014. Recognizing this, the state has opened a contact center to help answer the questions that citizens have about the program.
April Todd-Malmlov stated, “With the opening of the MNsure Contact Center, we make it easy for Minnesotans to get help from trained service representatives, to learn more about the choices they have for quality health insurance, and to choose the plan that is right for themselves and their families.”
She called the opening of the center “an important milestone” for the program and expressed her enthusiasm for the “much-anticipated, ‘live person’ customer service resource for over one million Minnesotans, and is a collaborative approach connecting MNsure to the Department of Human Services, Minnesota counties, MNsure navigators and agents/ brokers, and health insurers.”
When the contact center opened its doors, it immediately became clear that Minnesotans did, indeed, have questions about the program. In fact, Christopher Snowbeck of TwinCities.com reports that, in the first five hours of the center’s operation, there were over 200 calls, fielded by 30 operators. Snobeck adds that the call times averaged four minutes each, and one-third of the calls were about benefits and eligibility. Other questions, he reports, were about small business coverage and tax credits.
Other states are busy with their own call centers to address the questions that countless Americans have about what the new healthcare laws mean for them. Covered California is slated to open its Fresno call center in mid-November. While the MNsure call center’s opening was considered a success, Covered California’s Contra Costa County Call Center landed itself in hot water when call center employees left full-time jobs with benefits for what they were led to believe would be full-time jobs, only to discover later that they were part-time jobs that lacked benefits.