Today is the first day that California’s seven million uninsured can begin shopping for individual health insurance at CoveredCA.com.
Individuals and families who have individual market health insurance already (not through their employer, union or government health insurance like Medi-Cal and Medicare) and small businesses can also shop there too.
This is a historic day, yet another of a long series of important ObamaCare health insurance reforms that we have been working to implement with our partners in state and federal government since I was sworn in as Insurance Commissioner in 2011. Congratulations to Covered CA for meeting this important deadline.
Open enrollment for health insurance sold through Covered California runs from today, October 1, 2013 until March 1, 2014. Actual health insurance coverage does not start until January 1, 2014. To be covered as of January 1, 2013 you have to purchase by December 15, 2013.
You can shop and purchase directly at www.CoveredCA.com, or by calling Covered CA at 1-800-300-1506, or with the assistance of a Certified Enrollment Counselor certified by Covered CA, or through an agent or broker licensed by the Department of Insurance and certified by Covered CA.
Take a moment to forward this email to friends, family, neighbors and colleagues to help get the word out to those who are uninsured that they can and should begin shopping at CoveredCA.com. There are subsidies available for those below certain income levels so its well worth the time spent to see how purchasing health insurance through Covered CA might help you and your family.
Thank you,
DAVE JONES
Insurance Commissioner
As I’ve written before, Obamacare basically gives uncovered individuals the benefits of group insurance — coverage of pre-existing conditions, no rescission, and much lower group rates than individual insurance (achieved by including virtually all uninsured in a state-run group pool.) The details are complicated, but the broad outlines are not.
Incidentally, these “Creepy Uncle Sam” commercials — funded by and possibly featuring one of the arch-conservative Koch Brothers in an attempt to get young people not to sign up for Obamacare (without an accompanying offer to pay for them when they get sick and have to go to the emergency room) — are wildly inaccurate and depend for their effectiveness on the viewer being stupid. A recent survey shows that over 90% of OJB readers are not stupid. Good for you. (The “over 90%” figure is calculated after lumping together all “Matt Cunningham-like anonymous posters” as one person. One poor, sad, desperate, benighted person.)
The Koch Brothers are paying for ads trying to get young people to reject Covered California because a large and evil looking leering Uncle Sam will probe your body cavities. OJB salutes their patriotism — with one middle finger of each hand.
If anyone really needs an explanation of how such free preventative care will work, please ask. (Only long-established pseudonymous posters or those using their real names can expect an answer.)
For the rest of you, there’s this question: why do the Koch Brothers hate America?
Meanwhile, read what plain-speaking U.S. Senator from Maine Angus King has to say: encouraging someone to go without affordable health insurance, given the probability that it will help save the lives of an appreciable number of them, is akin to murder. The Koch Brothers aren’t telling their own kids to go without insurance — or, if they are, it’s only because Daddy can afford to pay cash for any conceivable illness.
UPDATE: And because we know how much you like videos, here’s this introduction to Obamacare from the Kaiser Family Foundation:
One of the positive provisions of the ACA is that Medicaid will be expanded to include individuals between the ages of 19 up to 65 (parents, and adults without dependent children) with incomes up to 138% FPL based on modified adjusted gross income. This expansion is up to the States to implement, and 22 have refused . According to a Mother Jones article, by that benchmark, 25 million Americans without health insurance are now eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/charts-obamacare-medicaid-expansion-states-race
It seems that an unintended consequence is that some businesses are using this new health insurance marketplace to cover some of their employees. “Companies including the Trader Joe’s grocery store chain will end health benefits for part-time workers next year, directing them instead to new insurance marketplaces.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec13/kliff_09-29.html
Westminster Councillady Diana Lee Carey, the Most Happening Councilcritter in the OC (and whose Facebook page I run) wants you to know that this Friday there will be a … let me see….
Senator Lou Correa is having a Covered California Town Hall on Friday,, October 4, 2013, from 2pm – 4pm at the South West Senior Citizen Center: 2201 W. Mc Fadden Ave.,Santa Ana, CA 92704. The event is free
Topics: Who is eligible; Financial assistance; What is covered by health insurance plans; Who is eligible to enroll in the Medical Program.
https://www.facebook.com/DianaLeeCarey
Added an explanatory video at the end, which probably requires no explanation.
This bit on the opening day of the Obamacare exchanges is devastating — although not in the way that the law’s critics may hope, expect, or like.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/red-states-residents-want-obamacare?paging=off
Check out the new ad I made, top right, for Friday’s Covered Cal event…. better than Obamacare! That helps it go down better for some…
Just listened to that little smartass on Fox News’ “The Five” – the guy who thinks he’s so smart and funny, just looked him up, his name is Greg Gutfeld (yes, I’m at my mom’s house – who by the way just got banned from the “Keep the Angels” page for linking to our “Keep the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” page, but I digress…)
And this insufferable clown just said “NOBODY AT ALL signed up for Obamacare in Louisiana yesterday – I did a better job of supporting Obamacare than Louisiana did” Of course all his friends laughed. I clicked on Greg’s article – was Louisiana really an outlier?
Hmmm….
“I don’t understand why there’s so much pushback,” Kimberlee Lauer, a 45-year-old, single woman and Laundromat owner who makes about $35,000 a year and has a pre-existing condition, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “I really am looking forward to this.”
“I feel really nerdy to admit that we stayed up ’til midnight,” Suzanne Cole, a 28-year-old woman told the newspaper. “But we did. It was like New Year’s.”
So… who’s lying? I guess you can say anything you want on TV, eh? Especially if it’s FOX news and it fits in with what they want to hear there.