Outgoing Covered California chief Peter Lee participates in enrollment session.
Open enrollment for individual health insurance plans via Covered California is under way and continues through Jan. 31.
Twelve health insurers are participating in the Covered California marketplace in 2022. Not all insurers are operating in all areas.
A record 1.6 million Californians are enrolled in the state Obamacare operation.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said that with additional federal assistance in the upcoming year, the state has a “tremendous chance to build on the Affordable Care Act and get not just more Californians covered, but more Californians getting help to pay for that coverage.”
Californians already enrolled in Covered California are automatically renewed. Average premium increases are put at 1.8 percent.
State residents are required to have health insurance. The state started its own penalties after the Trump administration removed the unpopular fines called for under the Affordable Care Act. This was known as the “individual mandate.”
“We’ve seen during this pandemic the devastation that individuals without health care coverage have faced, and the fact that sometimes that coverage doesn’t do exactly what we hope it does,” Ghaly said.
The additional federal subsidies come out of the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s stimulus package. The percentage of uninsured Americans is as high as 9.7 percent. About 93 percent of Californians have health insurance. As many as 17.2 percent of residents were uninsured in 2013.
The number of uninsured did not change substantially during the first 12 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Results also suggest that Medicaid and Marketplace enrollments have continued to grow in 2021.
“An estimated 575,000 uninsured Californians could enroll now and get remarkably affordable coverage,” Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said.
In California, families making as much as $100,000 per year are eligible for premium discounts. Premiums are set at percentages of their incomes, determined by the federal poverty level. Covered California says that under its least expensive options, more than 70 percent of participants would pay less than $10 per month.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra helped publicize the California open enrollment on Nov. 1. “That’s where we’re heading,” he said of widely affordable health care. “That’s where President Biden wants to go.”
Lee has guided Covered California since its inception, and plans to leave at the end of open enrollment. He said he leaves “with pride and confidence in the team at Covered California, who have taught me so much and who are poised to continue our important work.”
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