Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative CEO Bob DeVita said the newly formed health insurance provider now has more than 200 members.
“At the end of the month of October, we were at 142 members,” said DeVita. “We’re now over 200 and by the end of the week we expect to be in the 220s. Co-ops are seeing a steady increase in the numbers. We expect that the rate of increase will continue.”
[Update, 4 p.m.: DeVita said the exact number of members is now 236.]
Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, a nonprofit organization selling health insurance plans on the new Affordable Care Act-created health insurance marketplaces, was established when it received a $56.4 million loan from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The organization is one of four providers selling insurance through the health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, in the Milwaukee region.
DeVita said that of the organization’s now 200-plus members, 80 percent are signed up through the federal marketplace, and “70-75 percent” of those signed up are in southeastern Wisconsin. DeVita also said he had not been informed as to how many of these new members were able to sign up through the troubled healthcare.gov website.
“I’m not saying there aren’t problems,” DeVita said. “It’s not that we don’t recognize that there are issues. But we’re seeing volumes pick up.”
DeVita said people can get an online quote, get a premium subsidy estimate and enroll for coverage at commongroundhealthcare.org.
“It’s a way to go around healthcare.gov problems,” he said.
