Calif. Health Exchange Announces Recipients of $37M in Outreach Grants

On Tuesday, Covered California -- the state's health insurance exchange -- announced the recipients of $37 million in federal funding to help promote the exchange to uninsured residents, the Los Angeles Times reports (Gorman, Los Angeles Times, 5/14).

Background

Covered California primarily will serve individuals and small businesses.

Supporters hope that the exchange will function similar to websites like Amazon and Expedia so that users will be able to choose between various health plans through an easily navigable online store.

The exchange is expected to open for registration in October (California Healthline, 5/10).

Details of Grants

According to Covered California officials, about $34 million of the grant funding will go toward outreach initiatives aimed at individuals and $3 million will go toward outreach initiatives aimed at small businesses.

The grants range from $250,000 to $1.25 million (Los Angeles Times, 5/14).

Dana Howard, a Covered California spokesperson, said that the goal of the grants is to develop a network of established, trusted groups across the state that can perform several functions, including:

• Answering potential enrollees' questions about the exchange;
• Discussing health plan options; and
• Explaining how subsidies could reduce premiums for certain families (California Healthline, 5/10).

Grant Recipients

The grants were awarded to 48 organizations -- out of more than 200 applicants -- including:

• Health foundations;
• Not-for-profit groups;
• Unions; and
• Universities (Aliferis, "State of Health," KQED, 5/14).

Grant recipients include:

• Asian Pacific American Legal Center (Los Angeles Times, 5/14);
• California Council of Churches;
• California NAACP (Sanders, Sacramento Bee, 5/15);
• California Rural Indian Health Board (Los Angeles Times, 5/14);
• Los Angeles Unified School District;
• Planned Parenthood of Mar Monte; and
• The University of Southern California (Sacramento Bee, 5/15).

Comments

Peter Lee -- executive director of Covered California -- said that the exchange cannot deliver its message "from behind the desks in Sacramento." He said that educating people about Covered California will require partnership and collaboration statewide (Los Angeles Times, 5/14).

Diana Dooley -- secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency -- said that the grant recipients are "organizations that are connected with and trusted by the communities that we will serve" (Sacramento Bee, 5/15).

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