NEW YORK—The State Department of Health (DOH) has made some revisions to an online list of in-person assistance sites for enrolling in health plans, after media pointed out a number of errors listed on the site in October.
More than 50 enrollment sites listed in Manhattan under the subcontractor Harlem United were removed in a Nov. 1 update by DOH. The removed sites include mobile units, and Chinese-speaking salons, pharmacies, and bakeries in Chinatown.
Eighteen sites, including a handful of car service businesses, listed by Brooklyn Perinatal Network, as the lead agency without any subcontractor, were removed from the list as well. The agency now has 10 sites, cut back from 28.
All nine enrollment sites listed by the Brooklyn Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a subcontractor of the Brooklyn Perinatal Network, have been removed from the DOH’S list. The listings included Brooklyn Cupcake in Williamsburg, Apex Car & Limo, and Zambrand Auto Repair in Sunset Park.
Some of those businesses had reported being inundated with phone enquiries about insurance during October.
Harlem United, which now only has one site on the DOH list, declined to comment on its involvement in the navigator program.
The State Health Department’s Health Benefit Exchange has awarded nearly $27 million in grants to 50 community-based organizations and 96 subcontractors to help enroll people in health plans with in-person assistants or navigators.
The State Department of Health would not return phone calls and emails asking whether the organizations that had sites removed would be adding more sites to the list in the future.
In an emailed statement, however, spokesman John Emery said DOH contacted each lead agency to confirm that the phone number listed was the agency number, not the site number, and removed the hours of operation from the list as they are subject to change.
“It has always been the intent to update this list on a monthly basis as DOH learns more about which site locations are most successful,” he said in the statement.
Spokesman Bill Schwarz told the Epoch Times in October that the online list were sites where people could potentially enroll. The problem was the navigators should have provided their own agencies’ phone numbers, rather than the business’s phone numbers.
Six organizations listed on the site in error in October, by subcontractor agency Harlem United to provide assistance in Chinatown in Cantonese and Mandarin, had been wondering why they had been getting calls about health insurance.
Jason Quah, the pastor at Bethel Church in Eldridge Street, said one woman had threatened him after he told her he didn’t know about insurance.
“She wanted to report me to the government. I told her to go ahead,” he said. “We are a church and we don’t know anything about Obamacare.”
Around 50,000 New Yorkers have enrolled in health plans through the NY State of Health insurance plan marketplace since Oct. 1, 2013, when the open enrollment period started.
