Health Insurance Marketplace is focus of UAB annual AARP Alabama Policy Conference

This year’s theme is “The Health Insurance Marketplace and Beyond.”

The sixth annual University of Alabama at Birmingham AARP Aging Policy Conference will be held on Wed., Oct. 2, 2013, at the Edge of Chaos on UAB’s campus. This year’s theme is “The Health Insurance Marketplace and Beyond.”

“When open enrollment begins Oct. 1 for the Health Insurance Marketplace, consumers and providers alike will have questions,” said organizer Julie Locher, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine.  “A Kaiser Family Foundation poll earlier this year found that 42 percent of the public did not know the Affordable Care Act had become law, and 19 percent of those thought it had been struck down by the Supreme Court or repealed by Congress. This conference will help explain how the Marketplace will operate.”

The conference runs from 3-6 p.m. at the Edge of Chaos, 4th floor of the Lister Hill Library, 1700 University Blvd. It is sponsored by AARP, the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy and the UAB Comprehensive Center for Healthy Aging. A reception will follow.

Speakers include David J. Becker, Ph.D., a health economist in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at UAB; Michael A. Morrisey, director of the UAB Lister Hill Center for Health Policy; Nicole Duritz, vice president for Health and Family at AARP in Washington, DC; Jim Carnes, communications director for Alabama Arise; and Teresa Coughlin, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.

Attendance at the conference is limited to the first 125 persons who register. No continuing education units will be offered for this conference.