Latest California Healthline Stories
Coverage Begins for High-Risk Enrollees
After setting an ambitious timetable for startup and then hitting delays for almost a month after its scheduled launch, the state’s Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan officially started enrolling patients yesterday.
The program will use $761 million in federal money to help insure Californians who cannot get health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions. So PCIP helps provide coverage to people who would not otherwise get it.
“We’re very happy for the people of California who need this,” Jeanie Esajian of the state’s Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board said yesterday.
Reform Rollout May Waver if More Seek Exemptions
HHS’ recent decision to grant waivers for health plans that would not meet a key provision of health reform exposes how stakeholders can weaken implementation by simply resisting its measures.
High-Risk Insurance Plan About To Start
Originally, the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan was going to cover high-risk patients by the end of September. That start-up date was pushed forward to Oct. 7, and now it’s on an any-day-now status.
“We’re still working with vendors to finalize the contracts,” Jeanie Esajian of the PCIP said. “It’s a very complex process. All I can tell you is, it could be any day now that we announce coverage to begin.”
PCIP is a state-run, federally funded high-risk insurance plan for patients who have been unable to obtain health care coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Under the rules of national health care reform, due to go into effect by 2014, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to prevent individuals with pre-existing conditions from obtaining coverage.
Insurers Called ‘Essential Partner’ in Reform
Jay Angoff, the federal government’s health care point man for consumers and insurers, told health insurers that they are “an essential partner” in reform. “You’ll have a profound influence on the direction our country takes,” Angoff said at a meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans last week in Washington D.C.
Jon Kingsdale on Lessons from Massachusetts’ Experience With a Health Insurance Exchange
Jon Kingsdale, independent consultant and former executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, spoke with California Healthline about how California could learn from Massachusetts’ health benefit exchange.
Few Sources of Care for Uninsured in Inland Empire
A shortage of federally qualified health centers in the Inland Empire is posing a challenge for local health officials who are coping with a growing uninsured population. Overall, more than one million residents do not have insurance in the region, which spans a vast territory approximately the size of Maine.
Hope, Fear in State’s Community Clinics
There are some in the health care world who contend clinics caring for Medi-Cal patients and the uninsured are doomed to failure. Not so, according to a study released yesterday by the California HealthCare Foundation, which publishes California Healthline.
The report, Financial Health of Community Clinics, found that financially stronger clinics serve a high number of low-income patients and manage to have high reimbursement levels compared to financially weaker clinics.
Carmela Castellano-Garcia can explain that one. She’s president and CEO of the California Primary Care Association which represents more than 800 clinics and health centers in the state.
Exchanging Challenges in Health Plan Marketplace
While California is poised to emerge as a health reform leader with a new health insurance exchange, the state — like many — still faces numerous challenges over the exchange’s operation.
The best thing that happened to health insurance rate regulation was the last thing its proponents wanted to see.
When Anthem Blue Cross announced it planned to raise individual rates by as much as 39% back in February, it was the type of steep rate hike regulation proponents had been warning against for many months.
The public scorn and outrage prompted by that rate hike proposal was insurance regulation’s best friend — but, it turned out, was not enough to propel legislation.
California Set To Insure High-Risk Patients
On April 29, Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation that established the state’s federally funded high-risk insurance pool. This week that insurance pool is accepting its first enrollee applications.
That means the government set up a complicated government program in about four months. In state bureaucracy terms, that is the blink of an eye.
“We’ve been working nights and weekends trying to make this happen,” Deputy Director for Legislative and External Affairs at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board Jeanie Esajian said.