Covered California, the new
state health benefit exchange, will release a tentative list of
health plans and rates for the program at a board meeting in
Sacramento Thursday [May 23, 2013].
The meeting will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the auditorium
at the Office of the Secretary of State, 1500 11th Street in
Sacramento. The open session is expected to begin about 12:30.
Q: I had colon cancer and have had trouble buying health
insurance ever since. Under Obamacare, will insurance companies
still be allowed to refuse me because of my medical
history?
A: Finally, an Obamacare question with a simple answer, and the
answer is NO.
Starting on January 1, health plans no longer can deny anyone
coverage because of health status or previous diagnoses. Nor can
they charge more because of pre-existing conditions. Period.
Beginning next year, nearly 5 million uninsured Californians will
rapidly gain health coverage thanks to the Affordable Care
Act. This is wonderful news, especially for those who need
it most– the 1.4 million newly eligible for Medical.
However, the reality is that coverage does not necessarily mean
access to care. Simply having insurance doesn’t
guarantee Californians can actually receive attention if there is
a shortage of caregivers, namely primary care physicians
(PCPs). Even with health care reform, California does not
have enough of these doctors; this is partly due to the shortage
of primary care physicians and the lure of higher pay in
specialty practice. Medical students entering family practice
medicine as a specialty is on the decrease as well.
Not to mention, clinics in rural and urban areas will receive a
flood of millions of newly insured patients. Training physicians
can take up to 10 years and frankly, patients can’t afford to
wait.
Central Coast small-business owners and employees soon will have
an opportunity to learn firsthand how the Affordable Care Act
will affect them.The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic
Development (Go-Biz) is presenting a working lunch for small
businesses on the new federal health-care law. It will be held
from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday, June 7 in the cafeteria at
Santa Barbara City College, East Campus, 721 Cliff Drive in Santa
Barbara.
Michael Lujan of Covered California, formerly known as the
California Health Benefit Exchange, will explain how the
Affordable Care Act will affect small businesses in California.
Health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act begins Jan. 1,
2014; the act provides financial assistance to help small
businesses pay for health insurance.
Most young people feel like they have years of good health in the
bank. They are, as a group, so unlikely to buy insurance that
insurance companies dubbed them the young invincibles and in some
cases gave up on trying to enroll them in health care plans.
Some young adults, inevitably, will be proven wrong in their
optimistic evaluations of their health.
“We’re not invincible—no one’s invincible,” said California
organizer Tamika Butler. It’s not that people of her generation
don’t want insurance, Butler said, it’s that they can’t afford
it.
Butler works for the Young Invincibles, an organization created
in 2009 by two millennials who wanted to reclaim the term and
advocate for health coverage for their generation.
Many advocates and experts wonder if the Affordable Care Act will
actually make care more affordable for young people – or if the
young will simply end up paying the price of lowering costs for
everyone else. The “age-rating” provision of the ACA prevents
insurers from charging an older client more than three times the
amount they charge a younger client. In most states, the rate
stands at 5 to 1. To make up for charging older people less,
insurers are expected to start chargine younger people more once
the provision goes into effect in 2014.
Right now, young people are generally benefiting from protective
changes ushered in by Obama care.
Possibly the most popular provision of Obamacare was the
expansion of dependent coverage so that young people can stay on
their parents insurance until age 26. Even those who want to
repeal the legislation want to keep that provision intact. As one
of the first provisions enacted, it’s also one of the first
indicators to be evaluated.
The data suggests the change was a success in increasing the
number of Americans with insurance. “The total enrollment
exceeded original expectations,” said Harvard assistant professor
and senior advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services
Benjamin Sommers.
More than 3 million young people gained insurance between
September 2010 and December 2011 because of the change, Sommers
found. In his analysis, youth of all socioeconomic and racial
backgrounds benefited from the provision.
“It’s hard to see whether it narrowed disparities,” Sommers said.
“But we’ve really seen broad benefits in coverage.”
Those who it helped the most were single, male and out of school.
“The biggest gains tended to be in kinds of people who had fewer
options,” Sommers said.
In the past, married young adults have had more health-care
possibilities through a spouse, so the legislation helped to
provide single young adults with another option through their
parents. Women were also more likely to be insured, so Sommers
said that the provision helped men catch up. Before the change,
many insurers allowed young people to stay on their parent’s
insurance while in college, so the provision also provided a new
option for those no longer in school.
Sommers also found that young adults with poor health were most
likely to get coverage in the first few months of the provision.
Because of the provision, 23-year-old Kurt Henlin was able to
stay on his parents insurance after he graduated from Temple
University last May. His mother has insurance through her job as
an administrator at Bronx Community College.
The board at Covered California approved a model contract for
health plans Tuesday — following some changes — but put off
approval for the section on health plan performance until its May
23 meeting.
On Tuesday, April 30, the federal government’s Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the
new application for health coverage has been simplified and
significantly shortened. The application for individuals without
health insurance has been reduced from 21 to three pages, and the
application for families is reduced by two-thirds. The consumer
friendly forms are much shorter than industry standards for
health insurance applications today.
In addition, for the first time people will be able to fill out
one simple application and see their entire range of health
insurance options, including plans in the Health Insurance
Marketplace, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program
(CHIP) and tax credits that will help pay for premiums.
Meanwhile, California, which is the first state in the nation
to create a state-run health insurance marketplace known as
Covered California, is
working on a similar easy-to-use application.
Starting next year, nearly 5 million uninsured Californians will
suddenly have health coverage, due to the implementation of the
Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.Sounds great, right? But having
insurance doesn’t guarantee Californians can actually get care –
not if there is a shortage of caregivers.
WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) — Health insurance premium tax credits
from the Affordable Care Act work more like a subsidy rather than
like a tax credit, a U.S. non-profit group says.
Three years after Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, the
landmark law now known as Obamacare is finally nearing full
implementation. This week, veteran health care writer Emily Bazar
presents the second of her question-and-answer columns to help
answer questions. “Ask Emily” runs twice a month.
With less than a year to go before the full rollout of Obamacare,
many business owners are still scratching their heads over what
it will mean for them.
Health care reform is a “mammoth challenge,” Covered California
executive director Peter Lee says in a new video on small
business questions about the new insurance marketplace for
individuals and small employers that will go life next year, but
“it will be easy relative to how complicated buying insurance has
been in the past.”
In a new report issued on Friday, the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund
reported the results of its 2012 biennial survey on the number of
U.S. adults who lacked health insurance or were underinsured.
Starting next year, nearly 5 million uninsured Californians will
suddenly have health coverage, due to the implementation of the
Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.Sounds great, right? But having
insurance doesn’t guarantee Californians can actually get care -
not if there is a shortage of caregivers.
The Enterprise-Record correctly notes that many Californians are
unaware how California’s health care reform law will impact them
(Editorial: “Let’s Wait on Obamacare, April 14). But some answers
exist to the questions raised in your editorial. And as president
of Californians for Patient Care, we have a responsibility to
educate Californians who will soon be eligible for help through
Medi-Cal or Covered California, the state’s new health care
exchange.
If you’re among millions of uninsured Californians eligible for
government-subsidized insurance, the ripples of health reform
started with this week’s tax deadline.
Inspector General criticizes lack of public education about IRS’s
plans to implement little known strategy to garnish tax refunds
for taxpayers who don’t purchase health insurance under new
Federal Affordable Care Act beginning in 2014
Some 500 new jobs are being created in the Sacramento suburb of
Rancho Cordova to staff a call center for Covered California, the
agency that will handle the federal Affordable Care Act for
California.
By the time national health-care reform takes effect next year,
Los Angeles County health officials expect to enroll 300,000
people in an expanded Medi-Cal program.
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