Just over a half million California residents enrolled for health insurance in the first three months of Covered California’s operation, the state Obamacare operation says.
“We are on track to meeting, if not beating (our) enrollment estimates as we continue to pick up steam,” said Pete Lee, the organization’s executive director, left.
The preliminary total of enrollments in Covered California health insurance plans from Oct. 1 through Jan. 15, 2014, shows a total of more than 625,000, Lee said Jan. 21 in releasing the “milestone enrollment figures.”
To no one’s surprise, the clear majority of signups were by residents eligible for government subsidies. Lee said “hundreds of thousands” of residents are getting coverage directly from health insurance carriers instead of going through the state marketplace.
Covered California said estimates of subsidy-eligible enrollment by the March 31 deadline for 2013 coverage range between 487,000 and 696,000.
Online, from the Oct. 1 launch of the Covered California signup system through Dec. 31, applications were started for an estimated 1,993,012 individuals.
About a quarter of the consumers enrolled were in the key 18 to 34 age group, seen as important to the success of the Affordable Care Act because they are less costly as healthcare consumers.
Another target group, Latinos, made up nearly 20 percent of enrollees — at least according to tracking of consumers who identified their ethnic backgrounds (Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin). About 46 percent of subsidy-eligible Californians are Latinos, a figure that has brought criticisms of Covered California’s Hispanic outreach efforts.
Lee said of the Hispanic group:
We’re in the process of both fine-tuning the way we assess our enrollment demographics and, more importantly, building on our focus to ensure that more Latinos apply for and enroll in coverage. We have much work to do over the next three months to build on our outreach to this important population.
Covered California said 584,000 applicants were found to be “likely eligible” for Medi-Cal coverage in the first three months. Medi-Cal is a separate operation, but applications are taken on the Covered California web site.
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