Karen Davis, president of the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on health care issues, said Healthy Howard "seems like it's off to a great start" compared to other locally sponsored programs around the country.
Most require contributions from employers, which Howard doesn't do, but that kind of private funding would have allowed for more advertising, she said.
Davis credited Healthy Howard for directing residents who had called its offices to existing state and federal insurance programs, who contacted Healthy Howard and found they were eligible for existing state and federal insurance programs like the federally funded Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). About 2,500 Howard residents, many of them children, were assisted in this way, partly because of a specialized electronic enrollment system imported from California that identifies the programs for which they are eligible.
"None of those applications would have happened without announcing the [Healthy Howard] program," said Glenn E. Schneider, the Health Department's director of health policy and planning.
Healthy Howard is not insurance, but a network of local providers that charges members $50 to $115 a month for comprehensive medical coverage, including the use of health coaches to improve people's general health and over time lower crisis care expenses. In Maryland, every uninsured person's visit to an emergency room racks up big charges, most of which are paid by insured patients through higher premiums and charges.
Beilenson said his goal of enrolling 2,000 members the first year was overly ambitious and clearly not going to happen. His latest projections are for 908 plan members by July 2010.
"The biggest problem with all this is me," he said. "I made the definition of success this arbitrary 2,000 number."
An initial deluge of 1,100 calls swamped program workers and took several months to work through, he said. The recession has made it harder for some to afford the program's monthly charge.
Beilenson has witnessed the lack of knowledge about the program first-hand. Earlier this month, he screened 14 Howard County women for breast cancer as part of a free health department program, and 12 told him they had no health insurance. Yet not one had heard about Healthy Howard, he said.
Beilenson estimates there are at least 12,000 uninsured legal county residents who need access to health care.
"You have to give us a year or a year and a half to penetrate this market," he said.
