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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

ACA Sign-up Period

Study: Selling health insurance at Christmas is bad idea, By Louise Radnofsky, June 26, 2014, Wall Street Journal: “Tax preparers and some other advocates have complained for a while that the health law’s insurance sign-up period is timed wrong. Now they have a paper in the journal Health Affairs to back them up. Asking lower-income people to contemplate buying coverage around the holiday season is a bad idea, because their decision-making capacity is stretched too thin, say two health policy professors. Crafters of the Affordable Care Act originally envisaged the open enrollment period as a fall activity that would coincide with the sign-up periods for Medicare and also the time when many Americans who get coverage through their jobs have to renew their elections. . .”