Its taken a while but now more than two-thirds (68 percent) of Californias previously uninsured report having health insurance, up from the share (58 percent) who said they had coverage after the first open enrollment period, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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However, it also turned out from the survey released Thursday by the Menlo Park-based group that there were troubles faced by many newly insured when they tried to pay and access care. Those immigrants are not eligible for insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Both the exchange and Medi-Cal have had problems.
Some consumer health advocates did not find the result of the survey as surprising.
This survey is 3rd in the series beginning 2013 which hopes to track how this new law has affected lives of those that were uninsured earlier.
But the latest data was welcomed by many health care experts.
However, both the exchange and Medi-Cal have had problems, including for the narrow networks of doctors and hospitals.
When asked how well their health needs are being met, 86 percent of the recently insured now say they are being somewhat or very well met – up from 51 percent of the uninsured group in 2013. Sixteen percent of these people claim that they were told by the doctors that they would not be accepted as patients in the past year, while 23 percent said that they were made to wait longer for a medical appointment than what was acceptable. 26% of the rest were eligible for Medi-Cal & 25% were eligible for Covered California’s subsidized plans.
A 48 year old lady from San Jose who didn’t have health insurance since the year 2010, enrolled this year through Covered California after becoming a caregiver for her husband who is 63 years old and disabled.
In 2016, health insurance rates will rise around 4% on average in California. “What’s comforting about it is to know that there is a financial cap and that we won’t be financially decimated if something catastrophic happens”.
In a large majority of those who remain uninsured, 41 percent of them have been identified as having entered the United States through illegal means.
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About 32 percent of Californians remain uninsured, a figure that was at 42 percent back in the spring of 2014. The margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points for the survey of recently insured Californians.
