WASHINGTON, D.C. – During the Republican Leadership Stakeout today, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which found that the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate infringes on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom that Americans have enjoyed for more than 220 years. To read more about Blunt’s continued fight for religious freedom, please click here.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic challenger Paul Davis is shrugging off a national Republican figure’s suggestion that critics of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback are akin to the evil “Eye of Mordor.”

The Wichita Eagle reports that former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made the reference to “The Lord of the Rings” Monday during a rally in Wichita for Brownback.

Santorum said that like the ever-open evil eye in the fantasy saga, the conservative GOP governor’s foes are constantly searching “to try to oppress and defeat.” He also said that “the future of the free world is at stake” as Brownback seeks re-election.

Davis said Tuesday after an event in Topeka that he and his supporters are simply responding to voters who are worried about Brownback’s fiscal policies and the future of public schools.

By Jenny Gold
Kaiser Health News

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Most working people in the United States sign up for health insurance in a very straightforward way: a few forms, a few questions for human resources, a few choices of plans.

Signing up for Affordable Care Act insurance was nothing like that. It involved questions about income, taxes, family size and immigration status. And in most places in the country, there were myriad choices of plans with subtle differences between them.

Guess what? People looked for help on the decision.

During the Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period, about 10.6 million people received personal help from navigators and other enrollment assisters, according to an online survey of the programs released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

And the assistance was time consuming: 64 percent of the programs reported that they spent an hour to two hours with each consumer on average. The assisters and navigators included 28,000 full-time-equivalent workers across the country, funded by federal and state governments as well as outside sources, the survey found.

But those assisters were not distributed equally across states.

The 16 states that elected to run their own state-based exchanges had about twice as many assisters per 10,000 uninsured compared to the 29 states, including Kansas and Missouri, that defaulted to a federally facilitated exchange. (The other five states set up a partnership with the federal exchange.) People in states running their own exchange were twice as likely to receive help with enrollment.

The discrepancy is not terribly surprising: The states running their own exchanges had significantly more funding available for outreach and enrollment. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded a much smaller $67 million in federal grants to fund navigator programs in the 34 states with federally-facilitated or partnership exchanges.

The entire state of Ohio, for example, had gotten just $3 million in grants to do consumer outreach by October 2013. That’s compared to $24 million in Maryland, which had half as many uninsured residents.

“It’s not just the money,” says Karen Pollitz, lead author of the KFF survey. “The culture of coverage might also have been different. [States with their own exchanges] might not have been working uphill against the barrage of bad noise against the ACA.”

In addition, the mostly Republican states that defaulted to the federal exchange tend to have higher rates of individuals without insurance. Some 33 percent of the nation’s uninsured population lives in states running their own exchanges, while 68 percent live in states that defaulted to the federal exchange or set up a partnership.

Almost 90 percent of assister programs surveyed reported that most or nearly all of the people they helped were uninsured. More than 40 percent said that most and or nearly all of the people they helped did not have Internet access.

In the end, it wasn’t the broken website that was the top reason people sought help from an assister – it was a lack of understanding of the law. About 65 percent of the program said that most or nearly all consumers had online difficulties. But more than 85 percent said that most or nearly all had a limited understanding of the ACA and needed help understanding their plan choices. And three-quarters said that most or nearly all needed help understanding basic health insurance terms.

“How can you explain coverage options to someone who doesn’t know what a deductible is?” asks Pollitz. “It’s just a much longer conversation,” which might help explain why most of the programs reported that assistance required one to two hours per client. “And those same people, at least some of them, are starting to come back with post-enrollment problems,” Pollitz adds.

The need for help selecting the right plan is not likely to disappear in the coming years. “It’s a fundamental need people are probably going to have for the foreseeable future,” says Pollitz, especially as consumers experience a change in their family size or employment.

In the end, about 8 million Americans signed up for a plan on the health insurance marketplaces in the first year. Others enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP plans, and some of those who received help from assisters did not enroll in coverage at all.

The survey also found that federally qualified health centers and nongovernmental funds played a surprisingly important role in enrollment. Of the 4,400 different assister programs, 70 percent were supported either by the federal safety net clinic program or were privately funded.

The survey was conducted online April 24-May 12 among assister programs nationwide; 843 out of the 4,445 programs responded. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline will participate in a walk across the nation to draw attention to climate change.

Dozens of Nebraskans are expected to join the Great March for Climate Action on Saturday for a portion of the 3,000-mile walk from Los Angeles to Washington. The group’s destination for the day is the renewable energy barn built by Bold Nebraska on the pipeline’s proposed route.

Speakers will include Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Dave Domina, Bold Nebraska director Jane Kleeb and Julia Trigg Crawford, a Texas landowner who fought an eminent domain claim for the pipeline on her land.

The 10-mile walk will start at 9 a.m. at St. John’s Church in Marquette. A separate mile-long walk will start at 1 p.m. near the barn northwest of York.

CANDICE CHOI, AP Food Industry Writer

STURGEON, Mo. (AP) — A toddler has drowned in a private pool in central Missouri.

Boone County Fire Protection District spokeswoman Martina Pounds says the child’s mother put her down for a nap Monday and didn’t notice she had left her crib. Pounds says the mother later found the toddler in a pool outside their home in the Sturgeon area.

The child’s identity hasn’t been released.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department is investigating.

BURLINGTON, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas House of Representatives candidate has been arrested for having an open container of alcohol in his vehicle.

Burlington Police Chief Doug Jones says Jeff Freeman, a Republican running against incumbent state Rep. Peggy Mast of Emporia in the Aug. 5 primary, was booked into the Coffey County jail Sunday on suspicion of having an open container in his car.

Jones says Freeman was also cited for not having proof of insurance. He says Freeman passed a field sobriety test and posted bond of about $350. Freeman’s scheduled for an Aug. 14 court appearance.

The Emporia Gazette reports Freeman is on probation in Fairfax County, Virginia, after pleading guilty in 2013 to disorderly conduct.

Freeman didn’t return calls seeking comment Tuesday. It’s unclear if he has a lawyer.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – The family of a man who died while helping build the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts in Kansas City is working to honor all workers who have died while building Kansas City.

Ryan Goodman of Lee’s Summit died in November 2009 in a mechanical accident. The Kauffman Center does not allow memorials on the center grounds.

Ryan Goodman’s wife, Christie Goodman, and Councilman Scott Wagner are working together to overcome red tape required before a bench memorial could be built across the street from the center.

The Kansas City Star reports Wagner will seek to change an ordinance so the bench will be maintained as part of the Kansas City Convention Center’s grounds. The bench’s design also must be approved by the city’s art commission and convention facilities department.