The state is attempting to skirt around Federal health care reforms to devise its own strategy.
In terms of its health insurance exchange and sales, California was an early joiner and has pushed forward to stay ahead of the game at every level of the Affordable Care Act, including itself among the minority of states that have established their own marketplaces
Since Covered California was first created and Medi-Cal was expanded it has been seeking to cover one specific group.
Ever since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, California has been battling to be able to bring health insurance to the undocumented immigrants living within the state. The reason is that there are at least an estimated 2 million people there who are undocumented, and a considerable proportion of the state’s workforce is made up of these individuals. It has long been seeking ways to skip around the federal policies that hold back the ability of undocumented immigrants to access health plans.
The state has made some progress in providing health insurance to undocumented immigrants, but it wants more.
These are individuals who are vital to the economy of the state, but a recent study from the not-for-profit group called California Endowment has found that this group of people currently makes up a large proportion of the population of the state that is without insurance coverage.
According to the group’s senior vice president, Daniel Zingale, “California really only has one complaint about Obamacare, and that is its exclusion of undocumented Californians.”
In this state, the health care reform has essentially been a success, at least for the most part. Among those who had been uninsured ahead of the Affordable Care Act’s implementation, a tremendous 68 percent now have an insurance policy, according to recent figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Among those who now have coverage, it was reported that there was greater medical care access and they were more capable of affording it.
This was not the situation for health care coverage among the undocumented immigrants in California. According to the statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation survey, among those without health insurance in the state, 41 percent were undocumented immigrants.
