New healthcare exchanges under the federal health care law, the Affordable Care Act, opened to the public Tuesday in California and San Benito County. In California, the program is known as “Covered California,” and local officials in San Benito County are gearing up for the rollout.
According to local officials, San Benito County does not have its own call center. If people were to call the 800 number listed, those calls would be redirected to Monterey County’s Health and Human Services call center. However, San Benito County will still take all calls related to Medi-Cal, which is expanded under the law. More than 1.4 million Californians will be newly eligible for Medi-Cal.
More than 2,500 workers have been added to counties statewide to help implement the health care act, and more than 16,000 Medi-Cal workers have been trained on details of the new exchanges.
According to 2011 statistics from the California Healthcare Foundation, about one in four Californians are uninsured. More than 5.6 million residents are currently uninsured in California.
In parts of Hollister, more than 35 percent of the population was uninsured in 2011, according to the latest U.S. Census data. San Benito County had an uninsured rate of 19.3 percent in 2011, or about one-fifth of county residents. Most residents of the county already have health insurance, either through their employer or through government programs.
“It’s a major change from what we had in the past,” said Rick Shelton, president of Hollister-based Richard W Shelton Insurance Marketing Inc, about the new exchanges. “Basically, everyone, as of Jan. 1, has to have health insurance.”
The benefits of the exchanges vary, depending on the information people enter into the website, coveredca.com.
For example, a San Benito county family of four, with a combined income of $35,000, could qualify for bronze plans with a monthly payment of as little as $2 a month, after tax credits. However, the monthly payment would depend on income, the number of dependents in a household and age.
The new website, coveredca.com, also has been riddled with error messages and sign-up problems.
The exchanges signal a “paradigm shift,” said Maria Corona, the interim director of the San Benito County Health and Human Services Agency. Under the law, “we now need to determine what they (people) are eligible for, not what they’re not eligible for” as it used to be, she said.
Besides the unveiling of the new exchanges Thursday, the state will also be moving San Benito County residents who currently use Medi-Cal to a managed healthcare system, which means residents will get their MediCal services under a contract with the state, instead of the “fee for service” model.
“Through Covered California, for the first time families in our state will be able to compare health plans and purchase affordable coverage that is right for them,” said Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, in a statement.
