Officials have been using this new method to help to promote the marketplace across the state.
On Sunday, the head of the California health insurance exchange boarded a bus in order to tour Los Angeles and spread the word about the benefits that residents of the state can enjoy through the Affordable Care Act.
Many people in California have yet to take part in the health care law’s requirements.
A large proportion of the people who have not yet been participating in the California health insurance exchange are in the Latino community. According to officials who are a part of the marketing strategy, these individuals stand to gain from taking part in the marketplace and purchasing health plans. Officials from the exchange are hoping to be able to use the bus tour to better inform people who aren’t yet enrolled so that they will be better able to make educated choices with regards to their coverage needs.
The first stop on the California health insurance marketing route was in East Los Angeles.
More specifically, it was at AltaMed Health Services, a nonprofit health care provider. There, they provided a kind of preview of what the marketplace officials claim will be a broad scale strategy for enhancing enrollment in the third year of the Covered California insurance exchange.
According to Peter Lee, the executive director of Covered California, “Success for the Affordable Care Act is about success with the Latino community.” He added that over 40 percent of those in the state without insurance and who are eligible for subsidies are likely to be in the Latino community.
This is driving the state officials to place a greater focus on the people who are eligible for subsidies through Covered California – which they are estimating is made up of a group of about 750,000 people – but who are not actually enrolled in the exchange for a health plan.
That California health insurance estimate doesn’t include the additional 1.4 million people who are eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, which is called Medi-Cal. The figure also does not include the 1.8 million people in the state who are undocumented immigrants who are not eligible for state or federal programs and who do not have health coverage in another form.
