Our Services

Missouri Connections for Health provides many services related to health insurance and housing. Some of our services are provided directly under the Missouri Connections for Health name, and others are provided under the name of the specific program.

Are you looking for MidMoICS.com? You've come to the right place! We now provide all "Mid Missouri Insurance Counseling Services" assistance under the Missouri Connections for Health name.

Health Insurance Education and Assistance

Do you need help with health insurance? Missouri Connections for Health can provide free, unbiased help with many health insurance questions. We do not sell plans, so you can get the answers you need with no sales pressure!

 

Individual Insurance Help

The insurance counseling services Missouri Connections for Health offers include:

  • Licensed Healthcare.gov Navigator assistance with:
    • Healthcare.gov/Marketplace insurance
    • Medicaid (MO HealthNet)
    • Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
    • Marketplace to Medicare transition
    • Medicaid/MO HealthNet to Marketplace transition
    • Understanding your options when you change jobs
    • Understanding your options when you retire early
  • Help understanding what your insurance policy covers
  • Help understanding where to go to get healthcare covered by your insurance
  • Insurance questions and appeals assistance
  • Referrals to other organizations that can help

Classes, Trainings and Events

Missouri Connections for Health is excited to offer community education classes about health insurance and health literacy topics. In April through August, we offer these free classes at Columbia Public Library. We also attend many events and health fairs in Boone and surrounding counties to spread the word about our services and how to get help. See our events page for more details!

Looking for something that's not on our schedule? We can also provide custom training and education classes. We can cover almost any topic about health literacy, including Healthcare.gov (Marketplace) or Medicaid (MO HealthNet) insurance. Our custom training options are great for:

  • Community organizations who want to know where to refer their clients who need help with Medicaid or Marketplace insurance
  • Youth groups and young adult organizations who want to be sure their members know about their insurance options as they enter adulthood
  • Small employers who don't offer insurance but want to help their employees get covered
  • Church or community leaders who want to know how they can help members who are losing health insurance
  • Any organization that wants to offer a health literacy or health-insurance related class with absolutely no sales pitch-- because we don't sell plans!

These services were previously provided under the name "Mid-Missouri Insurance Counseling Services (ICS)."

 

Services Through Our Programs

Missouri Connections for Health offers several services related to health insurance and housing through other programs. Read on for more information about the other services we provide:

Medicare Assistance

We are proud to have held the grant to operate the Missouri State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) since 1993! We provide these services under the program name "Missouri SHIP." For the past 30 years, we've helped Missourians with Medicare enrollment, resolving billing issues, assistance with selecting prescription drug plans, and Medicare Advantage plans and Medigap and Supplemental plans. In addition, we provide assistance with appeals and grievances, suspected waste and fraud, long term care insurance, education on wellness and preventive services and programs to save consumers money. Click here for more information about Missouri SHIP, or click the blue button below to go directly to the Missouri SHIP website!

 

Coordinated Entry Housing Assessments

Missouri Connections for Health operates the Rural Unhoused Helpline, which provides HUD Coordinated Entry assessments on behalf of other direct housing service provider agencies. These agencies are provided a toll-free helpline number that they share with clients who are potentially eligible for housing assistance when no Coordinated Entry assessment is available locally. The organizations then refer clients to MCH’s housing assessment team to schedule a confidential Coordinated Entry assessment interview. Completed assessments are then handled by the regional agency responsible for providing direct services. By providing these assessments, Missouri Connections for Health takes some of the staffing and time pressure off of these agencies--allowing them to provide more services directly to Missourians in crisis.

Click here for more information about this program

 

Contact and Call Center

Missouri Connections for Health operates a contact/call center that connects Missourians to health resources across the state. Our call and contact center provides services for the following three programs:

Cover Missouri Coalition/Missouri Marketplace Helpline

We currently operate the Cover Missouri helpline as part of an agreement with the Missouri Foundation for Health and the Cover Missouri Coalition. The Cover Missouri Call Center connects Missourians with local agencies and Assisters who can help them with Healthcare.gov (Marketplace) and Medicaid (MO HealthNet) insurance questions, enrollments, and concerns.

Rural Unhoused Helpline

We operate the Rural Unhoused Helpline described above. This work is conducted as part of the Missouri Balance of State Continuum of Care. We address an otherwise unmet need: housing assessments for rural counties that lack the capacity to complete the Coordinated Entry process on their own.

Missouri SHIP Contact Center

We provide contact/call center helpline services through our grant for the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP). When a Missourian with Medicare contacts us, our staff members gather their contact information and ask a few questions to determine how we can best help them. Then, the contact center passes this information on to a certified counselor who can provide one-on-one counseling to address their concerns. This allows our SHIP clients to get free, unbiased, confidential, personalized, local support! See above or visit www.missouriship.org for more information about the Missouri SHIP program.