Greg Wegener hadn’t thought much about his health for years. Few heroin addicts do, he said. “In those times, you really don’t care about your health.”
That changed when Wegener, now 30, entered The Healing Place early this year to recover from his addiction. Now, he’s enrolled to receive health insurance coverage when Virginia’s Medicaid program expands eligibility on Jan. 1 to cover childless adults who can’t afford care.
“This is something grown-ups do — they get health insurance,” he said with a grin at the recovery center run by Caritas in South Richmond. “I’ve never been much of a grown-up until 10 months ago, when I came into treatment.”
Wegener, a Norfolk native, enrolled in Medicaid last week when volunteers from the Virginia Department of Medicaid Assistance Services came to The Healing Place to enroll men who are either sheltering there or in treatment for substance use addictions.
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Caritas also hosted two enrollment sessions — one last week and another on Tuesday — at its main office in the East End for women and children in the nonprofit organization’s emergency shelter program. Altogether, state volunteers enrolled about 175 people in Medicaid in the four sessions held at Caritas.
“The expansion is really important for our people in the shelter and recovery programs,” said Karen M. O’Brien, chief operating officer at Caritas.
For homeless people, Medicaid will offer them primary medical care and treatment for mental health and substance abuse disorders — “across the board, it’s all about better health care,” O’Brien said.
Only 2 percent of the men and women in the two shelter programs run by Caritas have full health coverage now, although the organization helps them get discounted medical care through Virginia Commonwealth University’s Virginia Coordinated Care program.
Under Medicaid expansion, 99 percent will be covered, estimated Allie Cornell, senior shelter program clinician for the 36-bed men’s shelter at The Healing Place and 32-bed women’s mobile shelter.
“It’s groundbreaking,” Cornell said of the effort by Virginia’s Medicaid office. “There’s no way we would have been able to enroll everyone in four days.”
About 15 people from the Department of Medical Assistance Services volunteered to help people enroll through “a completely new grass-roots initiative,” said Matt Harrison, who was one of them.
Harrison works as a data researcher in the agency’s office of data analytics, but he’s been a volunteer at Caritas since writing about homelessness for his undergraduate anthropology thesis at the University of Richmond.
“I wanted to get a better understanding of what being homeless is like in my hometown,” the Ashland native said.
Harrison and Sarah Samick, a regulatory coordinator who previously worked as an eligibility and enrollment supervisor, pitched the idea to Dr. Jennifer Lee, director of the Medicaid office.
“I am proud of these volunteers for truly making the Virginia Medicaid agency’s mission come to life,” Lee said in a statement Wednesday. “Our partnership with Caritas is a perfect example of how we can help one person at a time get covered and have the chance for better health, even as we work to enroll thousands of Virginians through our program-wide efforts.”
The state has gotten a fast start on its ultimate goal of enrolling an estimated 400,000 uninsured Virginians in Medicaid. Enrollment began Nov. 1 and had reached 140,643 by late Wednesday. DMAS expects to enroll 360,000 by the end of next year and 375,000 by mid-2020, well ahead of its initial forecast.
The volunteers at Caritas “don’t necessarily have a background for eligibility work at Medicaid,” Samick said, but they have jumped at the opportunity to help childless adults and low-income parents who haven’t been eligible for coverage under Virginia’s previous rules.
“This really has been fun,” she said.
Dana Thierry is a senior policy analyst now, but she worked in eligibility for more than 20 years.
“We have a lot more opportunities to say ‘yes,’ “ Thierry said as she waited for the next applicant at Caritas.
Now, she said, “we’re able to provide care for parents taking care of their children and older children who are taking care of their parents.”
The program also is able to help men, like Wegener, who are part of the 180-bed treatment program at The Healing Place. Most of the beds are at the facility on Dinwiddie Avenue in Blackwell, with about 50 beds in off-site apartments.
Wegener had been using heroin for four years before entering treatment. He said he had abused opioids since he was 11, when he would steal his mother’s pills.
“I’ve never had regular health care,” he said.
With help from the Virginia Coordinated Care program at VCU, Wegener has begun to address his deteriorated teeth, although he needs significant additional dental work. He’s discovered he suffers from high cholesterol and is prone to early onset of diabetes.
He also suffers from anxiety and depression, as well as Hepatitis C, contracted from dirty needles, and is now in remission.
Wegener has been in and out of treatment for his addictions for 10 years, but he watched too many friends die of overdoses. “It’s kind of fight or flight, and I chose to fight this time,” he said.
He’s also serving as a peer mentor to other men in the program.
“I have a chance to give back what’s been given to me.”