California should have done a better job collecting and releasing data on those who signed up for health insurance on the state’s open marketplace, advocates for minorities say.
Author: Hannah Hough
In the wake of the killings in Isla Vista a week ago today, the conversation has turned to the link between mental illness and violence.
More people than now have health insurance in California, but is it the kind of coverage they want? Several reports in the past weeks noted that insurance networks are narrowing under the Affordable Care Act. Some enrollees are finding that the doctors and hospitals they thought they’d have access to aren’t actually under their plan’s umbrella.
Last week the Health Report wrote about how the state’s annual Medi-Cal renewal forms are so complicated that they may cause tens of thousands of people to lose coverage. Among the problems is that the forms are only available in English and Spanish, reported Claudia Boyd-Barrett.
The latest statistics on enrollment in California’s insurance marketplace, released this week, show what kinds of plans people selected in each region. The complete statistics, broken down by 19 regions, are available on the Covered California exchange website.
In an article published Monday, I wrote about the policy decisions that contributed to the massive Medi-Cal backlog. Through interviews and state documents, we revealed that the state prioritized Covered California’s insurance enrollment system over one for Medi-Cal, leading to a backlog of about 900,000 applications from low-income people.
As they scrambled to open the insurance gates to millions of Californians under the federal health law, state officials prioritized the open-marketplace enrollment system over one for low-income residents, according to state documents and officials.
Where you live in California can significantly influence your health, according to the fifth annual County Health Rankings report.
Nearly 1.4 million people enrolled in a Covered California health plan, the state announced this week, after the open enrollment period ended Tuesday. The big headline was that the enrollment total exceeded the state’s target. But included in the press release were statistics on who enrolled, how they enrolled and what health plan they selected. An analysis of these statistics raises several questions.
Jails and prisons are the largest “mental institutions” in California, holding far more people with severe psychiatric illnesses than state hospitals, according to a report released last Tuesday by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association.