Covered California

via Covered California:

Covered California Joins African-American Health Leaders Urging Californians to Get COVID-19 Vaccinations and Encouraging Consumers to Get Covered in 2021

A few weeks ago, I did a write-up about a concerning development at HealthCare.Gov: The growing push under the Trump Administration to not only partner with 3rd-party web brokers (which has been done since the first days of the ACA under the Obama Administration), but to actively promote those third-party brokers over HealthCare.Gov itself.

In and of itself, this wouldn't be too problematic as long as people are still ultimately enrolling in fully ACA-compliant policies and receiving ACA subsidies if they're eligible for them. Hell, one of these 3rd-party authorized web brokers even has a banner ad at the top of my website...which I only allow because this particular one only sells on-exchange ACA-compliant policies.

This Just In...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 15, 2018

Covered California Extends Deadline for Jan. 1 Coverage Until Friday, Dec. 21

  • Texas District Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act has no impact on Covered California’s open enrollment period.
  • Covered California is extending today’s deadline to Friday, Dec 21, for consumers who want health care coverage that starts on Jan. 1, 2019.
  • Consumers who enroll after Dec. 21, and by Jan. 15, will have their coverage start on Feb. 1.
  • While open enrollment ends in 44 states on Saturday, California is one of seven health insurance marketplaces which will enroll consumers after Dec. 15, serving 25 percent of the U.S. population.
  • 58,000 consumers have signed up since Monday, including 17,000 on Friday.

Covered California, the largest state-based ACA exchange for the largest state in the country, actually launched their 2019 ACA Open Enrollment Period over three weeks ago, on October 15th.

They still haven't posted any 2019 enrollment numbers, which I find rather irritating, but they did just send out the following press release regarding a promotional bus tour they're doing which highlights a couple of interesting data points:

Covered California Launches Iconic Bus Tour to Promote Enrollment and Show How “Life Can Change in an Instant”

OK, this is just kind of...odd.

As regular readers will recall, after three years of full 3 month Open Enrollment Periods across every state, last year the Trump Administration slashed the official Open Enrollment Period in half, down to just 6 weeks, from November 1 - January 31 down to November 1 - December 15th.

In response, most of the state-based exchanges announced that they were sticking with a longer period anyway, ranging anywhere from a 7th week all the way out to the full 3 month period, in the case of California, New York and the District of Columbia...each of which kept things going all the way through January 31st as had become the norm.

California even went one step further, passing a state law specifically mandating a 3-month Open Enrollment Period for 2018 and beyond.

Until today, I've been operating on the assumption that they'd be sticking with the November/December/January schedule which had become the default.

Apparently not, however. According to Louise Norris:

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