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Blog Posts tagged "Health Insurance"

Covered California Raises the Bar on Reducing Health Disparities

Cary Sanders, Senior Federal Policy Director, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
Mike Odeh, Children Now
May 5, 2016

At Covered California’s latest April Board meeting, Executive Director Peter Lee declared: “We are raising the bar not just for California but for the nation.” Mr. Lee was referring to the bold initiatives adopted by the Covered California board that they expect will improve quality of care for Covered California enrollees, make advances in hospital safety, and promote primary prevention and wellness. The contracts will include 45 separate distinct requirements on plans focused on improving health outcomes for Covered California enrollees (See Attachment 7).

Starting in 2017, Covered California’s contracts will require health plans to demonstrate year-over-year reductions in health disparities in four targeted areas of chronic disease: diabetes, asthma, hypertension and behavioral health. In order to accurately measure disparities, health plans will be required to share quality and performance data for all their lines of business. Additionally, plans will be required to increase the percentage of self-reported demographic data for their Covered California enrollees with a goal of 80% of enrollees reporting by the end of 2019.

TWEET: Busy Week Features Child Obesity Awareness Month and National Voter Registration Day

David Dexter, Communications Coordinator, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
September 25, 2015

Welcome to This Week in Equity Engagement on Twitter (TWEET) for the week of September 21, 2015. This week was highlighted by National Voter Registration Day and some resources for Child Obesity Awareness Month. Let’s get to it:

The Afterschool Alliance has some great resources that point to the importance of physical activity in reducing childhood obesity.

Kaiser Permanente has some good news about declining childhood obesity rates in Southern California.

Fewer Uninsured in California; Significant Declines for Low-Income Californians and Part-Time Workers

Miranda Dietz, Research Data Analyst, UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education
September 21, 2015

This post originally appeared on the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education's blog, Raising the Bar.

According to newly released data from the Census, the first year of the Affordable Care Act succeeded in reducing the ranks of the uninsured while having little effect on employer sponsored coverage. California was no exception, and indeed showed the fifth largest drop in uninsurance of any state.

The share of Californians under 65 years of age who were uninsured for the entire year fell by about 5 percentage points from 16.4% in 2013 to 11.4% in 2014, according to the newly released Current Population Survey (CPS) data. This amounts to 3.8 million Californians age 0-64 who remained uninsured throughout 2014, 1.6 million fewer than in 2013.

The major changes in coverage occurred because of the opening of the Covered California health care marketplace, through which 88% of enrollees received federal subsidies, and the expansion of MediCal, California’s Medicaid program. The share of Californians with insurance through an employer for any part of the year remained steady, at about 55% of the non-elderly population.

Fig 1. Percentage point change in coverage rate by coverage type, Californians age 0-64, CPS 2013 to 2014

fig1

Tuesday Tidbits: State-Level Trends in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

David Dexter, Communications Coordinator, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
March 3, 2015

Welcome to Tuesday Tidbits! If you would like your resource/event to be highlighted, please let me know at ddexter@cpehn.org. Thanks!

We spend a lot of time talking about the importance of certain types of health coverage and care (i.e. Medi-Cal, subsidies in Covered California, and our safety net programs). These programs need our support because our most vulnerable populations rely on them for their continued health. But sometimes it’s good to look at what remains the source of health coverage for the majority of Americans: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI).

Earlier this year, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Minnesota’s State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) released an interesting analysis of state-by-state trends in ESI over the past decade. Their findings showed that across the country ESI enrollment has decreased in the last 10 years, seemingly in line with a common criticism of the Affordable Care Act (ACA): that it will reduce the availability of and enrollment in ESI. However, the researchers caution that the ACA should be monitored and evaluated within the context of the larger trends in ESI over the years preceding its implementation: