Final Push For Obamacare Signups In Philadelphia
By David Madden
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The feds are cranking things up across the country to get as many Americans signed up for Obamacare as possible. College students even helped out at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
After getting a lecture on the importance of the Affordable Care Act, 20 students manned a phone bank to contact some 200 people eligible for the program but who haven't applied.
"We really find that a lot of people still don't realize that there's financial assistance available to them to help pay for their premiums," Joanne Grossi, Regional Directr of the US Department of Health and Human Services told KYW Newsradio, "and that's really stopped a lot of people from enrolling because they feel like it's unaffordable."
The average Pennsylvanian who qualifies for that help gets about 225 dollars a month. There's the carrot. Now the stick. If you don't have health insurance by the end of the month, you could be fined 695 dollars or more.
So far, 400 thousand eligible Pennsylvanians have signed up. "We're down to about 11% uninsured but we want to get every single Pennsylvanian insured who deserves to get the health insurance they need," Grossi said.
This year's deadline is January 31st.
