Covered California Continues “Let’s Talk Health” Campaign With Record Financial Support Available As Its 12th Open Enrollment Continues
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Covered California continued its “Let’s Talk Health” campaign at the Beale Memorial Library today with the 2025 open-enrollment period underway.
Regardless of the results of the 2024 election, open enrollment is ongoing and coverage through Affordable Care Act marketplaces throughout the nation, including Covered California, is unaffected for 2025.
“Our doors are open, and now is the time for Californians to sign up for health insurance,” Covered California Executive Director Jessica Altman said. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land, and the election results do not affect the financial assistance available to enrollees through federal and enhanced state subsidies next year. The most financial assistance ever offered to Californians to help pay for health care coverage remains available for 2025.”
Covered California announced the first-year results of its first-in-the nation health plan accountability program, the Quality Transformation Initiative(QTI), today at its board meeting.
The QTI — aimed at improving health care outcomes and reducing disparities for members — was created with input from consumer advocates, health care providers and health insurance companies. It was developed in collaboration with the Department of Health Care Services and CalPERS.
The QTI establishes direct and substantial financial incentives (up to 1 percent of premium in the first year, rising to 4 percent of premium in future years) for all Covered California health insurance companies by requiring payments for failing to meet specified benchmarks for a focused, meaningful set of health-outcome measures. These equity-centered outcome measures include blood pressure and diabetes control, colorectal cancer screening and childhood immunizations.
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), approved section 1115 demonstration amendments that allow, for the first time ever, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage of traditional health care practices provided by Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities, Tribal facilities, and urban Indian organizations (UIO). Today’s action is expected to improve access to culturally appropriate health care and improve the quality of care and health outcomes for tribal communities in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Oregon, and will support IHS, Tribal, and UIO facilities in serving their patients.
However, that was actually only for the preliminary rate filings. In addition, at the time I only had access to California's on-exchange individual market enrollment data, so I had to guess at the off-exchange numbers.
The small group market was more frustrating: I only had enrollment data for about 1/3 of the carriers; the rest had redacted their enrollment information. This meant I couldn't even guess at a weighted average rate change.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced that the statewide weighted average rate change for dental plans offered through the marketplace in 2025 will be 1.55 percent.
Covered California also announced that consumers will have more choice among dental plans with the addition of a new dental carrier, Humana, that will offer full statewide coverage in 2025.
via Covered California: (this is actually from nearly a month ago; somehow I missed it at the time):
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced its health plans and rates for the 2025 coverage year with a preliminary weighted average rate increase of 7.9 percent.
The rate change can be attributed to many factors, including a continued rise in health care use, increases in pharmacy expenditures, the rising cost of care, labor shortages and other issues affecting the health care industry.
Because of the robust financial help available to Covered California enrollees, many will see a small impact, if any, to their monthly cost. Covered California, with the support of Gov. Newsom and the California Legislature, has worked to reduce the impact of increased consumer costs in 2025 by providing more support for its state-enhanced cost-sharing reduction (CSR) program, which will eliminate deductibles and lower the cost of care for over a million Californians.
Covered California announced today that more than 158,000 Californians remained covered through the Medi-Cal to Covered California enrollment program over the past year.
Beginning in April 2023, following the end of the federal continuous coverage requirement put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Medi-Cal resumed its renewal process by redetermining eligibility for over 15 million of its members. In May 2023, Covered California and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), which administers California’s Medi-Cal program, launched the Medi-Cal to Covered California enrollment program.
Under the program, Covered California automatically enrolls individuals in one of its low-cost health plans when they lose Medi-Cal coverage and gain eligibility for financial help through Covered California. Through early June of 2024, the program has helped 158,100 Californians remain insured.
It was just a week ago that Nevada Health Connect announced they'll be integrating a form of artificial intelligence software into their enrollee engagement system.
Covered California Collaborates with Google Public Sector to Accelerate and Simplify Health Insurance Enrollment Using AI
Google Cloud AI integration will enable Covered California to verify more than 50,000 health care documents with an 84 percent verification rate monthly, providing residents with affordable, high-quality health care options at unprecedented speed.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Covered California, California’s health insurance marketplace, announced today that it is leveraging Google Cloud’s AI solutions to help streamline the organization’s efforts to provide California residents with affordable, quality health insurance.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California has opened the application process for its Navigator Program, with up to $33.9 million to be granted over the next three years to community organizations that help individuals and families become aware of and enroll in health insurance, with a focus on diverse and underserved communities.
The application process will run until March 15. For this Navigator Program funding cycle, the total annual budget has nearly doubled, increasing from $6.5 million to up to $11.3 million per year.
“Covered California’s success over the past decade is due in great part to the tremendous Navigator Program grantees that have helped Californians understand their health care options and get the coverage they need,” Executive Director Jessica Altman said. “The increased funding this year is a testament to the effectiveness of this program and will help strengthen our efforts to reach the most vulnerable Californians where they are.”
With its open-enrollment period ending on Feb. 9, Covered California announced that a record number of Californians have selected health plans for 2024.
As of Jan. 31, there are 1,784,653 Californians who have chosen a health plan through Covered California for 2024, with 306,382 new enrollees and 1,478,271 renewing their coverage. The total surpasses the previous high set in 2022.
The increased federal subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act paired with California’s new cost-sharing reduction program for 2024 helped create the highest number of new sign-ups during an open-enrollment period since 2020. Consumers have until midnight on Feb. 9 to enroll in coverage that would be effective as of Feb. 1.
