If you're in need of health insurance, local nonprofits can help

INDIANAPOLIS — The out-of-pocket cost for healthcare can be thousands of dollars without insurance.

The average cost of a three-day hospital stay is around $30,000, according to healthcare.gov.

Alisha Callicott is in the business of making sure all of that money is not coming out of your pocket when you get well and go home.

Callicott is a coordinator with Covering Kids and Families, part of the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County.

Every month, the nonprofit helps hundreds of people connect to programs like Medicaid, Affordable Care Act Marketplace, Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) and Hoosier Healthwise.

"Everyone deserves access to health insurance, education, resources, access to economic resources that will help improve their lives," MDwise Supervisor Rachel Maxey said.

Cost, transportation, confusion, or missing paperwork can serve as barriers that prevent Hoosiers from signing up.

Callicot says immigrants and non-native English speakers can face even more barriers.

"It's a lot of information. It can be very overwhelming," Callicot said.

To help, Covering Kids and Families has Spanish-speaking navigators on staff.

"We use the Language Line. It has hundreds of dialects that we can get a translator online or on the telephone to speak to that client," Callicot said.

If you need to enroll, here's what covering kids and families need to help you:

• A birth certificate or form of identification.
• If you're working, proof of employment.
• If you're unemployed, a letter of recommendation.
• A piece of mail to verify the address in the last 30 days.

"If they may be homeless or living out on the streets, if all you have is an I.D, we can still get you signed up, but if you have the other documents as well — the social security cards, the birth certificates — that just makes the application go a little bit smoother," Callicot said.

Open enrollment for Affordable Care Act Marketplace insurance is open right now until January 15, 2023.

You can find more information here.