This past week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report, California’s Previously Uninsured After the ACA’s Second Open Enrollment Period: Wave 3 of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s California Longitudinal Panel Survey, that showed a precipitous decline in the number of uninsured Californians as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions. According to the report, California has cut its uninsured population by two-thirds thanks to the expansion of Medi-Cal and the launch of Covered California.
CPEHN Executive Director Sarah de Guia appeared on National Public Radio (via Bay Area affiliate KQED) to discuss the report and the impact the ACA has had in our state:
“This is really great news for California,” said Sarah de Guia, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, an advocacy group. She spoke of people being lifted from the fear of paying for care. “There’s this sense of relief, that they’re not one accident or incident away from bankruptcy. … They can keep their costs contained.”
The report also showed that coverage rates for previously uninsured Whites (79%) and eligible Latinos (74%) have been similar. (These numbers do not take into account a large population of Latinos who are ineligible to receive coverage through the ACA because of their immigration status.) However, a closer look shows that a small gap has grown between Whites and eligible Latinos after the two populations had identical take-up rates (61%) in last year’s Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
In her NPR interview, Sarah touched on the importance of targeted outreach in the future to make sure that this gap doesn’t continue to increase:
Advocate de Guia said the small gap found this year — five percentage points — was worrisome, because grants to community groups to help people sign up have declined by millions of dollars. “Enrollment dollars are going down or being cut,” she said. “We don’t want to see that gap widen over time.”
The report also shows that disparities in terms of the remaining uninsured population continue to increase with communities of color now representing 83%, up from 77% before the ACA. Latinos now make up 70% of the remaining uninsured after comprising 59% of the uninsured population in 2013. Additionally, 41% of the remaining uninsured is now ineligible for coverage due to immigration status. And we project that number will rise to 50% by 2019 without legislative action, further exacerbating disparities in access to care. CPEHN will continue to join other organizations in supporting the Health for All movement and advocating on behalf of proposals that will expand access to health coverage for all Californians, regardless of immigration status.
But the main takeaway from the Kaiser Family Foundation report is that the ACA has done a tremendous job reducing the state’s uninsured population. And with a concerted effort to increase enrollment in communities of color, we can continue to see further success in the future.