Author Archives: Admin

Good News for Open Enrollment Season for Medicare and Marketplace! Insurance is more affordable.

September 2024

Medicare and Marketplace Open Enrollment Periods are right around the corner! And there is good news: changes have been made to make health insurance more affordable, and to reduce your out-of-pocket expenses. Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) is here to help you with Open Enrollment!

CCHCC staff are the most experienced enrollment counselors in Champaign County for Medicare, ACA Marketplace, and Medicaid insurance plans. Our services are provided for free to community members. With your support, CCHCC can provide free, vital direct services to keep our community covered.

Health insurance enrollment – We’ve got you covered! Health insurance enrollment work requires increasingly specialized knowledge and skills – whether for Medicare, or for the ACA Marketplace and Medicaid. Our federally-certified staff are the most experienced enrollment counselors in our community. This means that anyone – young or old or in between; employed or unemployed; retired; low-income, middle-income, high income, or no income; currently insured or uninsured – can contact CCHCC and we will help them figure out what coverage is available to them, and we will help them get covered!

Medicare Open Enrollment – from October 15 through December 7. If you would like to change your Medicare Advantage plan or Part D prescription drug plan, you will have the opportunity to change for the 2025 plan year, starting October 15, until December 7, 2024. CCHCC staff can help you compare plans and complete those enrollments. Even if you already like your plan, it is important to review it carefully during Open Enrollment to make sure it will remain the same for the following year and will continue to cover your prescriptions and providers.

SUPPORT CCHCC!

READ ON!

CCHCC Saves Lives, Stabilizes Health,and Increases Economic Security.

Stories from the Front Lines – please support CCHCC!

June 2024

“D” – a young adult male – was sent to live in CU with an older relative who promised to look after him. Instead, “D” was isolated, used, and abused, and left with no prospects for improving his life. “D” and his adult relative became homeless and were living out of a broken down car with the relative’s dog, who was also mistreated. CCHCC’s involvement turned everything around for “D” and for the dog.

Dear Friends,

We at Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) encounter many incredibly difficult situations when we work with individuals and families to help them get the health care and the resources that they need to improve their health and their lives. Our work – whether it is helping people get health insurance or prescriptions, or applying for public benefits such as Disability – can literally help save lives, stabilize people’s health, prevent homelessness, and increase economic security for our most vulnerable community members.

We met “D” and his older relative at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen. We learned that they, and the relative’s dog, were living out of a broken down car since the relative had lost his home. “D” was shy and withdrawn. The relative was medically fragile. We started working with them to try to find them housing and stability. In the course of working with this small family, we began to suspect that “D” was not being cared for, and we witnessed the dog losing weight. After building some trust with “D” – especially around his deep concern for the dog – we learned that “D” had no ID, no food stamps, no hope for employment or education because of lack of ID and transportation. We were able to extract “D” and the dog from the older family member. The dog had become severely underweight and we knew it would die if it stayed with this relative. One of our co-workers quickly found a loving home for the dog, and the dog is doing well and is quite happy. Our co-worker was also able to help “D” get a State ID, food stamps, a bus pass, and transitional housing. As soon as “D” got his ID, he went out and got a job. We helped him get a checking and savings account at a local bank and he started saving money from his job. “D” was able to get his own apartment and is now living independently and he is happy and secure. He refers to the CCHCC staff who helped him as his “Aunties”.

Clients come to CCHCC in need of a variety of services. In the course of working with clients to address their needs, we often encounter situations that require a deeper and more intense involvement than what appears at first glance. As a small mission-driven non-profit, we have the ability to get deeply involved and to find creative solutions to the messiness of life that can destabilize community members and threaten their health and economic well-being. Some situations seems hopeless. We do not turn away from difficult situations – instead, we dive in and do all we can. To illustrate our work, here are a few more stories from the front lines of our work.

READ ON!

New mental/behavioral healthcare options available at Promise Healthcare

May 20, 2024

Please see the information below to learn more about mental health and behavioral health services now available at Promise Healthcare.
 
Promise Healthcare’s psychiatric providers can see patients as young as 5 years of age, and up. Promise Healthcare’s Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners can provide medication prescribing, management, and monitoring.
 
In many cases, same day appointments are available, including for psychiatry.

Promise Healthcare’s Behavioral Health Programs
Information provided by Promise Healthcare’s Director of Behavior Health Services, Jim Hamilton.

Anyone can call Promise Healthcare at 217-403-5433 – if they receive a voicemail, leaving a message is best and the call is returned within 24 hours. It the need is urgent – call Promise’s main number at 217-356-1558.

READ ON!

We have expanded services for special populations – please support CCHCC!!

March 2024

It has now been a year since we expanded our services to better support the needs of our community. Thanks to your help we have been able to help many more people through our dedicated homelessness benefits counselor, senior services specialist, and disability team. Having dedicated staff members for these populations means that we can increase the number of people we can serve and the services we provide!

Helping individuals who are homeless
Through partnerships with the Strides Shelter, Cunningham Township, City of Champaign Township, Daily Bread, Regional Planning Commission, the Continuum of Service Providers to the Homeless, local law enforcement, and our local hospitals, we are making sure that those dealing with homelessness have access to the public benefits that they are eligible for like Medicaid, SNAP, disability, prescription assistance, and more. Our staff members are regularly at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen and Strides Shelter to connect with clients directly.

Providing services for seniors
Aging in our community comes with many new situations, one of the biggest being Medicare. CCHCC’s dedicated senior services specialist understands Medicare and knows about the additional programs that might benefit seniors in the area. They have provided over 180 services in the last year related to Medicare Part D, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Savings, Extra Help, and more! They can also help with applying for benefits like SNAP and the license plate discount through the Secretary of State.

Disability application assistance
After seeing the immense need for disability assistance in the community, CCHCC launched the disability assistance program. The disability team has provided over 200 services related to SSDI or SSI applications. That includes completing paperwork, requesting medical records or identifying documents, and completing appeals. These programs are very difficult to apply for, and most applicants in the state of Illinois are denied these benefits. Many applicants give up after numerous applications and appeals, only to suffer as a result of not being able to work and earn an income. CCHCC is able to help at every stage: initial application, appeals, and even multiple appeals. Regardless of the stage of your application, the disability team can help!

Health insurance enrollment work
Now with additional staff members, our Certified Application Counselors (CACs) have more capacity to help with Special Enrollment Periods for the Health Insurance Marketplace. If you have moved, lost your health insurance, or had another type of life change in the last 60 days, you might be eligible to buy a health insurance plan on Healthcare.gov. And as tax season rolls around, it is important to remember to update your income if it has changed. Income changes could affect your financial assistance and CCHCC can help make those updates.

CONTINUE READING

Thursday 2/29 – Community Speaker Series – Hope Village

March 27, 2024

Champaign County Health Care Consumers would you like to invite you to attend an event this week, on Thursday, Feb. 29 at 7 p.m., at the Urbana Free Library on the topic of Hope Village.
 
The UIUC Humanities Research Institute is hosting a Community Speakers Series with the topic for Thursday focusing on Hope Village.
 
The event is free and open to the public. The information for the event is at the link immediately below, as well as in the text below:
https://calendars.illinois.edu/detail/6807/33472274
 
Event: Community Speaker Series – Hope Village Project
 
Featuring
:
 
Dr. Wanda E. Ward, Executive Associate Chancellor for Public Engagement, UIUC
 
Claudia Lennhoff, Executive Director, CCHCC
 
Moderated by Antoinette Burton, HRI Director and Professor of History
 
Date and Time: Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 7 p.m.
 
Location:  Urbana Free Library, Lewis Auditorium
 
About Hope Village: Hope Village is a unique small homes community that will offer housing solutions for adult community members experiencing chronic homelessness and who are medically fragile.
 
To learn more about the UIUC Humanities Research Institute, you can visit the link below:
https://hri.illinois.edu/
 
We hope to see you there!