In Brief: Covered California Enrollment Tops 1.2 Million
Covered California Enrollment Tops 1.2 Million
Enrollment via the Covered California health insurance exchange surpassed 1.2 million as of the last day of open enrollment Monday.
The total may rise in the coming weeks as applications in process the day of the March 31 deadline are factored in. According to exchange officials, nearly 156,000 Californians obtained coverage in the final week of open enrollment, and another 389,840 accounts were created by visitors to the exchange’s website.
“We’ve set records on accounts created five of the past six days,” said Peter V. Lee, Covered California's executive director, on Monday.
Those consumers who had to telephone Covered California's call center were waiting as long as 1 hour and 10 minutes in the last few days prior to the open enrollment concluding.
In addition to the commercial lives enrolled via Covered California, another 1.13 million enrollees in the Medi-Cal program were processed through the exchange. Enrollment in Medi-Cal remains ongoing. Commercial enrollments will resume in the fall.
Total Medi-Cal enrollment as a result of the Affordable Care Act has topped 1.5 million.
“Since Oct. 1 we’ve worked nonstop to accommodate the incredible demand for health care coverage, including Medi-Cal, in California,” said Toby Douglas, director of the California Department of Health Care Services.“We’re proud of what’s been accomplished, and at Medi-Cal, with year-round enrollment, we look to continue expanding healthcare opportunities for Californians.”
Nationwide, more than 7 million Americans have signed up for healthcare insurance, federal officials announced. That met the initial enrollment projections issued by the Obama administration prior to the start of open enrollment last October, and exceeded the scaled-down projection of 6 million after troubles with the federal healthcare exchange kept initial enrollment figures down.
Many Uninsured Misinformed On ACA
A new consumer survey by a nonpartisan market research firm indicated a significant number of Americans who made a decision not to purchase insurance under the Affordable Care Act may have done so because they were misinformed.
According to the survey of 2,741 adults who did not have health insurance in the past six months, 70% decided not to enroll in an insurance plan prior to the March 31 deadline. Sixty-two percent cited the cost of coverage as the primary reason.
However, of those who cited expense as a concern, 85% were eligible for tax subsidies. But only 32% visited a health insurance exchange website, and 29% performed no research whatsoever.
“What we found is that those individuals who were the primary reason behind the ACA and its subsidies—the low-income, uninsured—seem to have made the assumption that health insurance remains unaffordable to them, often without exploring whether a subsidy would help them afford it, and they are acting accordingly,” said Susan McIntyre, managing director of healthcare at Market Strategies International, the Michigan-based firm that conducted the study.
