Obamacare Met With Confusion, Relief At Start Of New Year

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The new year brought relief for Americans who previously had no health insurance or were stuck in poor plans, but it also led to confusion after the troubled rollout of the federal health care reforms sent a crush of late applications to overloaded government agencies.

That created stacks of yet-to-be-processed paperwork and thousands — if not millions — of people unsure about whether they have insurance.

Mike Estes of Beaverton, Ore., finally received his insurance card on Dec. 27 after applying in early November. Still, the family was thrilled to have insurance through the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's version of Medicaid, because their previous $380-a-month premium "literally crushed our family's finances," Estes said.

Obama administration officials estimate that 2.1 million consumers have enrolled so far through the federal and state-run health insurance exchanges that are a central feature of the federal law. But even before coverage began, health insurance companies complained they were receiving thousands of faulty applications from the government, and some people who thought they had enrolled for coverage have not received confirmation.

Tens of thousands of potential Medicaid recipients in the 36 states relying on the federal exchange also are in limbo after the federal website that was supposed to send their applications to the states failed to do so.

Reports of complications were scattered around the country.

In Burlington, Vt., the state's largest hospital had almost two dozen patients seek treatment with new health insurance policies, but more than half of those did not have insurance cards. Minnesota's health care exchange said 53,000 people had enrolled for coverage through its marketplace, but it was unable to confirm the insurance status of an additional 19,000 people who created accounts but did not appear to have purchased the plans.

In Connecticut, officials were pleading for patience as call centers fielded calls from people who are concerned because they had yet to receive a bill for premiums or an insurance identification card.

"This is an unprecedented time, because there are a record number of people who have applied for coverage with an effective date of Jan. 1," said Donna Tommelleo, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Insurance.

California Budget Surplus: Golden State Debates What To Do With Extra Money

SAN FRANCISCO -- The late rapper Notorious B.I.G. may have been have hailed from New York, but his immortal maxim, "mo' money, mo' problems" has surfaced in the Golden State.

Earlier this week, California Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his revised budget plan for the fiscal year that begins in July. It reaffirmed something that many in government have been predicting for some months: the state may be headed for a multi-billion dollar budget surplus resulting from the rebounding economy and a tax hike approved by voters last November.

The notoriously cash-strapped state spending less than it takes in hasn't occurred in more than a decade. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about how that money should be used -- from restoring government programs slashed from years of budget cuts to paying down the massive collection of debt obligations that the Los Angeles Times called a $28 billion cloud hanging over the state's future.

Though much of the surplus could be automatically diverted into the state's public education system, that hasn't stopped some in Sacramento from drawing up their own wish lists for what to do with the additional revenue.

Assembly Speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles) said last week that his spending priorities include putting more money toward child care for poor families and providing increased financial assistance to college-bound Californians. "It's about responsibility," Perez told the Associated Press. "It's not about walking away from our obligations."

Other suggestions proffered by Democrats have included increased spending for the state's low-income Medicaid welfare program MediCal, reversing some of the deep cuts that have devastated the state's court system and increasing funding to job training programs. Some of these ideas were incorporated into the spending portion of the budget Brown made public on Tuesday.

Because Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, not to mention a recent legal shift allowing the passage of a budget with a simple majority, the California GOP has been almost entirely shut out of the process.

Staying true to his public image as a voice of fiscal restraint Brown urged, well, fiscal restraint.

"Everybody wants to see more spending -- that's what this place is, it's a big spending machine," said the governor at a press conference in Sacramento earlier this week. "But I'm the backstop."

"It's not time to break out the champagne," he added.

That doesn't mean the administration is content to just stick the surplus in the bank and be done with it.

"Brown wants to use lot of this money for his new school funding program, where more money would be targeted toward schools in impoverished areas and with large percentages of non-English speakers, but a lot of members of the legislature don't seem to keen on this," San Jose State political science professor Larry Gerston said. What may ultimately happen is a compromise, with the governor agreeing to kick in some money for legislators' favored programs in exchange for getting more funding for schools, he said.

However, Gerson told HuffPost he's unsure this surplus will materialize. "California has a long history of promising surpluses that never actually come to be because predicting government income in our state is notoriously difficult," he explained. "When 75 percent of our revenues come from from a single [income] tax that primarily falls on high earners, one bump in the economy and your projection could be off by billions of dollars."

Gerston said he doesn't see as politically likely using the money to pay down any of the state's long-term debt obligations with anything more than a token contribution, even though the release of the original surplus projection in January is what triggered Standard & Poor's to boost California's credit rating.

The California legislature has until June 15 to approve Brown's budget.

Via Huffington Post

CPEHN: Brown Administration Introduces Medi-Cal Expansion Proposal

Last week, Governor Jerry Brown's Administration introduced their proposal for the Medi-Cal expansion authorized as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). This proposal, while an important first step, fails to take advantage of all of the opportunities available in the ACA to ensure our most vulnerable populations, the majority from communities of color, can access affordable health coverage through a fully expanded Medi-Cal program.


You have the opportunity to contribute to this critical discussion. The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is hosting a stakeholder call to discuss the proposal tomorrow, Wednesday, February 6th, from 1:30 to 2:30 pm. To access this call, dial (877) 708-9768 and enter the passcode: 5143546.


If you have further questions, email Cary Sanders at csanders@cpehn.org.