March 2023

Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) is undertaking an enormous effort to serve even more people in our community – specifically focusing on “special populations” that are low-income and underserved in our community, and who are suffering the ravages and strain of living in persistent poverty.

CCHCC is building new programs to significantly increase services to these special populations and bring greater health and economic stability to their lives: low-income seniors, low-income people with disabilities, homeless and near-homeless individuals, and pregnant and parenting women incarcerated in the County Jail. Please read on to learn more about our exciting new initiatives, and what you can do to help support these efforts.

Hope Village – a tiny homes village for chronically and medically fragile homeless individuals: After many experiences working with medically-fragile homeless individuals in 2021 to help them get housed, CCHCC developed the idea of creating a tiny homes village with intensive case management services for chronically homeless individuals in our community. We saw first-hand how our county’s current system of housing that is available for homeless individuals does not work well for a subset of homeless people: the chronically homeless and medically-fragile homeless individuals. These are individuals who have many challenges, traumas, and health problems, who are not able to be easily housed and maintained in permanent housing.

CCHCC is excited to be collaborating with Carle and UIUC to create “Hope Village” – a tiny homes village to house this extremely vulnerable population. We believe that “housing is health”. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting new project!

READ ON!

December 13, 2022

Senator Scott Bennett’s sudden and unexpected death. By now you have likely heard the very sad news of Senator Bennett’s tragic death. Senator Bennett was beloved by so many in our community, including CCHCC. He was an excellent State Senator who worked with CCHCC on several different issues, including 5th & Hill, and the Mahomet Aquifer. And he was a genuinely wonderful person who was kind, compassionate, pragmatic, and effective, and fun. In the coming days, CCHCC will write a tribute to Sen. Bennett. We, like so many, are utterly heartbroken.

READ ON FOR MORE NEWS

Health insurance and public benefits are complicated.

December 2022

By now, most people know that CCHCC is the only organization in Champaign County that can help enroll community members in all forms of health insurance – whether that be Medicaid, Marketplace, or Medicare and Medicare-related programs. But did you know that CCHCC does more than health insurance enrollment work?

Over the years, CCHCC has grown in our ability and expertise to help community members enroll in a wide variety of public programs, including SNAP (food stamps), LIHEAP (energy assistance), hospital financial assistance, disability benefits such as SSI/SSDI, as well as many other programs including Secretary of State discounts for seniors and others. CCHCC has grown our capacity to be able to provide these forms of assistance because we saw the need in our community.

However, did you know that Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) currently does not get any  federal or state funding to help community members enroll in health insurance or other public benefit programs? And yet, even without federal or state funding, CCHCC has been doing enrollment work for Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act’s Marketplace plans, as well as other programs for years. And our services are free!

CCHCC staff are federally Certified Application Counselors, and we provide our free services to help thousands of community members get, and keep, affordable health insurance. Besides ACA Marketplace plans, our staff also help with Medicare enrollment, Open Enrollment for Medicare Advantage and Part D plans, and Medicaid and Medicaid Managed Care plans.  

How can we do this work without federal or state grants? The funding that supports CCHCC’s enrollment work comes from community support – including from individual contributions from people like you!

DONATE NOW!

READ ON!