California’s health insurance exchange forecasts as many as 700,000 individuals will sign up for coverage and subsidies in its first six-month enrollment period.
“Those are big numbers; those are big goals,” Covered California executive director Peter Lee told the organization’s board. But, “Our goal is to blow the roof through these estimates.”
Board chairwoman Diana Dooley said she was cautiously optimistic about the beginning of operations, calling the progress so far “a miracle.”
“We are going to be doing some of the testing after the launch,” she admitted, a reality echoed several times during the Sept. 19 board meeting.
Dooley, a Rolling Stones fan, characterized the situation as: “You can’t always get what you want / But if you try sometimes well you might find / You get what you need.”
Lee provided an upbeat overview of the Obamacare marketplace’s readiness in the final days before it opens for business Oct. 1. That will be “a new day for Californians,” he said.
Covered California’s web site and phone call center are all systems go for Oct. 1, the board was told Sept. 19. Lee again stressed that he expects “very little enrollment in the month of October” with most of the signups coming in November and December, closer to the Jan. 1, 2014, effective date for coverage.
Lee said there were almost 1,800 “certified educators” getting the word out about the health marketplace, with almost 7,300 events planned for October and November.
Paid ads for Covered California are about to start rolling out, the board was told.
“We need to do effective marketing in culturally appropriate ways,” Lee said. “We have been adding collateral in different languages” with specific call-in phone numbers established for individual languages.
Most likely in response to criticisms that Covered California had been courting the key Hispanic constituency, but not blacks, Lee said: “We’ve been working very closely with African American media.”
In terms of preparedness, the board was told:
- The phone call-in centers expects 80 percent of calls to be answered within 5 seconds. Calls are running about 1,400 a day now. Lee said at call centers there were “over 500 trained individuals right out of the gate,” with more workers coming in November as needed.
- The paper application is down to three pages per individual. Still, one board member said, “It is hard” to fill out. The application is being revised to include more “California-specific ethnicities.”
- The Covered California web site has “very good capacity,” Lee said. Staff is preparing for heavy traffic early on for “anonymous shopping.” There had been concerns that the site would not be functional for launch, but that is no longer the case.
The board expects to have performance-related data in mid-October, with signup data the next month.
As for signup forecasts: “In the near term, we have for the first time identified what (success) means for open enrollment said Lee (pictured). “During the next six months … we are targeting to have between 500,000 and 700,000 subsidy-eligible individuals enrolling.”
Lee said he wasn’t concerned about target numbers for non-subsidy-eligible insurance seekers, just that they all find coverage under the protections of the Affordable Care Act. About 2.7 million Californians will not be eligible for subsidies but will have a guarantee of coverage and new consumer protections under the essential benefits provisions of Obamacare.
1.4 million Californians will be newly eligible for Medi-Cal, the board said.
Toby Douglas, director of the state’s Department of Health Care Services, said “about 600,000 people will be enrolled on day 1 into Medi-Cal” via the Low Income Health Program.”
“People need to understand that Medi-Cal is separate,” Lee said. “I wanted to stress how important this partnership is between the Department of Health Care Services and Covered California.”
Lee said theirs was a “partnership we live and breathe every day.”
“There is so much ahead of us,” Douglas said. “We’re going to learn as we move along … to continue to test and change.”
Lee agreed: “We want to correct things in real time.”
The board approved several changes to eligibility and enrollment rules, including a simplification of small-business employer filing requirements for the SHOP (Small Business Health Options Program).
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