Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts specifically related to California health insurance, enrollment, premiums, plans, termination, Covered California, Medi-Cal, Medicare, small groups.
From the sloppy training, poorly designed and broken website, lack of real information about plans to the patronizing pep talk tone of the webinars, I’m just about done with Covered California. If I didn’t feel so strongly about health care reform and the importance of the Affordable Care Act I would have cut my ties with Covered California long ago and just concentrated on keeping my current clients with their current carriers.
Registered domestic partnerships are receiving a financial break under the Affordable Care Act not available to married couples. For married couples, if either one is offered employer sponsored health insurance that automatically excludes the spouse and children from receiving tax credits to lower monthly premiums on health plans purchased through the state health insurance exchange of the ACA*.
Californians with individual and family plan health insurance are opening letters from their existing carriers notifying them of steep premium increases due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The skyrocketing rate increases are leading some policy holders to question the wisdom of Obamacare. But upon closer inspection, the higher rates may not necessarily be all that they seem.
From past experience, Lujan’s focus has been in the small business group market and that was the area he was initially brought in to manage. In recent months it has become evident that SHOP may not play as well as some people had anticipated. On top of the nervousness from small businesses and their lack of enthusiasm over the ACA, Anthem Blue Cross announced they won’t participate in SHOP.
The question I was faced with was if by adding Google ads I was selling out and abandoning my core business? It might actually scare some folks away from calling me if they perceive my website as just another advertising sink. But what do I have to lose?
The emergency regulations force all “non-grandfathered” plans to include the 10 EHBs which means that plans offered through Covered California won’t be put at a substantial competitive disadvantage. Plans not offering all the benefits would have been priced lower than plans in the state exchange. While health insurance plans offered outside the Covered California may still be less expensive for a variety of reasons, at least they will have equivalent benefit designs.
The overwhelming majority of the funds in the individual market are allocated to organizations targeting specific counties to promote Covered California.
Health care reform, which was suppose to make health insurance affordable, may force employees in group plans to make unaffordable choices.
It’s not often that you get to ask questions of a director whose organization will soon have over half a billion in annual revenue. Peter Lee, director of Covered California and arguably the largest “start up” in California’s history, answered question from anyone about the new health insurance market under the state exchange.
While having a fully functional small business Covered California portal is important, it still remains to be seen how many of the estimated 375,000 small businesses in California will actually participate to set up health insurance plans for employees.
