On May 18, the Urban Institute released a brief offering a five-part strategy for outreach to uninsured individuals eligible for health coverage under health reform.  The authors suggest that federal policymakers use the tax system to identify and enroll uninsured individuals into the appropriate health coverage, base eligibility on reliable data, provide hands-on application assistance, make enrollment systems consumer-friendly, and facilitate effective interagency coordination.  The brief posits that these federal strategies would buttress state efforts to expand health coverage.

From the report:

By reducing the number of uninsured, these steps could help achieve the ACA’s basic goals for expanding coverage. They could also contribute to the effective implementation of insurance reforms, since enrolling the healthy as well as the sick will help prevent such reforms from increasing premiums charged in the exchange. And by qualifying consumers for assistance through matches with reliable data, rather than by requiring public employees to manually evaluate and verify traditional application forms, this approach is likely to lower administrative costs, deter fraudulent applications and reduce the number of erroneous eligibility determinations.

Full report: Implementing National Health Reform: A Five-Part Strategy for Reaching the Eligible Uninsured (PDF | 318.04 kb)

Urban Institute.  (2011).  Implementing national health care reform: a five-part strategy for reaching the eligible uninsured.  Dorn, S.