Exchange Wants Covered California Days

The idea started in Sacramento, but it wasn’t a statewide scheme at first, said Covered California executive director Peter Lee at the exchange board meeting last week

“A lot of state policy happens in Sacramento, but Sacramento is a local community, too. And locally, a lot of policy can happen,” Lee said. “The idea is, [Sacramento] Mayor Kevin Johnson announced that Nov. 16 is going to be Covered Sacramento Day.”

That relatively small acknowledgement of the state’s health benefit exchange now has taken off, Lee said.

“This is happening now in Modesto, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles,” Lee said. And the exchange would like it to spread all over the state — with a Covered California Day in as many cities as they can sign up.

“We’ve now sent out letters to 500 other mayors,” Lee said. “We want to have Covered Redding, Covered Rancho Cordova, and so on. We want all of the local communities to be part of this effort.”

So far, Lee said, Covered California doesn’t have a tally of the cities that will participate but he thinks this is the kind of idea that could go viral.

The exchange would like cities to adopt Nov. 16 as their Covered California Day.

“We’ll keep you posted about how many cities join this effort,” Lee said.