But Ms. Douglas, 50, who was working about 30 hours a week as a dollar store cashier and a services coordinator at an apartment complex for older adults, soon realized that her insurance did not fit in her tight monthly budget. She stopped paying her premiums in April and lost her coverage a few months later.
“When you owe on your house, on your truck, when you’re a single parent of a college student and you have other bills,” she said, “it just doesn’t work.”
On Nov. 1, a new sign-up period for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will begin, and insurers, health care providers and enrollment groups are ramping up campaigns to encourage 10.5 million eligible uninsured people to buy policies. But even as those efforts begin, the public insurance exchanges, also known as marketplaces, created by the law are facing another challenge: keeping the customers they already have.
