PHOENIX - The open-enrollment deadline to obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is now only a month away. More than 600 members of the nonprofit "Cover Arizona" coalition are holding a statewide "Day of Action" on Saturday, kicking off a final push throughout March to get people enrolled.

Diane Brown, director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group's Education Fund, said information, education and enrollment assistance will be provided Saturday at more than 23 locations in Maricopa, Pima, Yuma and Coconino counties.

"There are events throughout the state offering one-on-one, face-to-face assistance," she said, "and they're folks who can really help people understand their options and their rights."

Brown said people should allow at least an hour for the process. They should bring ID and, if they're working, a pay stub. More than two-thirds of Arizonans who have enrolled so far have qualified for financial help to bring down the cost of their monthly premiums.

Brown said the enrollment events are especially targeting the uninsured and underinsured who haven't yet explored their health-care options. They're also looking to help folks who already enrolled, but picked a plan without nearby medical providers.

"People may have enrolled in the health insurance marketplace, but didn't look at where the providers were located," she said. "So they may have chosen a plan, but there wasn't someone they could go and see that was in the network that they chose."

Brown said the "Day of Action" events also will be trying to reach people who may have been told in the past that they don't qualify for AHCCCS (Access), Arizona's version of Medicaid.

"Many individuals who previously had not qualified for AHCCCS, perhaps because they did not have a child, are now eligible," she said, "and enrollment assisters are helping them to navigate that process."

At least 110,000 Arizonans have signed up through the Health Insurance Marketplace, Brown said, with thousands more newly enrolled in AHCCCS. An online guide is available at ArizonaPIRGedfund.org. Assistance also is available by dialing 211.

More information is online at coveraz.org/day-of-action.


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The number of Medicare enrollees is projected to rise over the next few years as the baby boomer population ages. More than 2 million Illinoisans are currently enrolled in the federal health care program, according to Healthinsurance.org,

The Office-Based Facility Association, a coalition of practitioners, is calling for a change in what they view as an ineffective and unfair pricing structure of the Medicare Physician Fee schedule.

Jason McKitrick, executive director of the association, said other payers linking themselves to Medicare is one of the issues.

"When you've got ongoing cuts to Medicare, that means you've likely got ancillary cuts going on with the private side, with the Medicaid side, etc.," McKitrick explained. "It's the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, ultimately, that's the agency and the federal government that sets the rates for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule."

The associated pointed out the current fee schedule addresses doctor's fees only, not the costly and necessary supplies and equipment needed for their practices. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data, there are 300 office-based services under the fee schedule for which Medicare reimbursement is less than the direct costs, before even considering other costs like overhead and physician work.

Dr. Sreenivas Reddy, a vascular interventional radiologist in Hinsdale, said in addition to seeing patients, he has to monitor overhead expenses such as office space and employee salaries, both affected by inflation. Not having the proper medical equipment and supplies, he added, limits his ability to perform specialized procedures and forces patients to seek care elsewhere.

"That makes these patients go to the hospital-based facilities," Reddy noted. "We have to close our offices and try to join these hospital-based models. They would love to come to the office, get the procedure done in one or two hours, versus it takes like a whole day in the hospital setting."

Reddy emphasized physicians' reimbursement, based on the current physician pay schedule, has been on the downtrend for the last five years. The group has further concerns about a decrease in the number of private practices causing more medical deserts for interventional radiology, cardiology, vascular surgery, radiation and oncology care.

Farm advocates say price gouging on meat and poultry are taking a toll on Montanans.

A farm group cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data as proof of corporate greed, and says companies are still using supply-chain issues as an excuse for inflated prices.

Companies faced massive supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic. But Ag Department data show most of those problems are gone - and food prices in Montana haven't dropped.

Groceries here are 5% higher than the national average and egg prices are up 50% since last year, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Joe Maxwell, chief strategy officer with Farm Action, said food producers are looking for ways to keep prices artificially inflated.

"And it's just a part of their doing business now," said Maxwell. "They find excuses in the markets to gouge that consumer. And one thing we want to be very clear on is that the consumer knows it's not the farmer. The farmer's getting squeezed just as much as is the consumer."

Food producers have blamed the supply chain, but also plant closures and a strain of avian flu for supply and demand issues - driving up production costs.

Farm Action is the same group which, not long after the official end of the pandemic, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate egg prices - which had tripled in some cases.

Maxwell said Ag Department data show the numbers did not justify the price hike, and adds corporate food producers have positioned themselves to have outsize control over the market.

"They've got that control over the farmer, not unlike oil companies have over oil fields," said Maxwell. "They now have that control because there are very few buyers of farmers' commodities, so they have that control over the farmer, the producer."

Farm Action has also been critical of large, corporate operations that raise thousands of animals in confined spaces, which have been known to pollute air and groundwater.





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A recent wave of racist texts targeting Black Wisconsinites has sparked concerns about data privacy.

The personal information people voluntarily disclose on various online platforms is often used for marketing purposes and can be sold to data brokers, who then sell it to others.

Chad Johnson, assistant professor of computing and new media technologies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said industry estimates show most data brokers have no less than 15 data points on every American including age and ethnicity, detailed contact information and even Social Security numbers.

"Since there's no regulation over who can buy those, of course, it could be other advertising agencies, it could be other platforms," Johnson pointed out. "But there's also nothing stopping, for example, a white supremacist movement from buying that information for purposes exactly like this."

Personal data can also be stolen or leaked. Johnson added there is currently no comprehensive federal law to protects data and privacy in the U.S. However, Wisconsin's new data privacy law goes into effect next year.

The Wisconsin Data Privacy Act, passed a year ago today, includes requiring businesses to inform people if their data is being collected and the purpose, as well as the right to access their personal data and request it be corrected or deleted.

Johnson said because anyone can have such detailed information about their targets is where an intimidation factor comes in.

"It kind of sends the message, also implicitly, well what else could they possibly know?" Johnson explained. "If they have my ethnicity, do they have my address, do they have my children's names, do they have my school or my children's school? Do they have my web history, or anything along those lines? It's impossible to know."

He added until people come together to demand better regulation, little can be done to prevent cyberattacks, making individual precautions more important than ever.


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