Staff writers
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, discusses enrollment in the first month of operation, during a meeting of the California Health Benefit Exchange Board of Directors, in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013. At right is Diana Dooley, chairwoman of the board. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
SACRAMENTO --The board of the state's new health insurance exchange Thursday may have infuriated hundreds of thousands of Californians with its decision not to go along with President Barack Obama's directive to extend their individual health insurance policies for another year.
But the exchange, called Covered California, did offer a few conciliatory gestures. Among them are an extension of a Dec. 15 application deadline to enroll in a health insurance plan to Dec. 23. That might ruin the Christmas season for those who work for insurance companies, but it will give the Californians with canceled health plans more time to shop for new ones.
Most of the individual plans are being canceled because they don't comply with the new federal health care law.
On Friday, the federal government followed California's lead by extending its application deadline to the same date.
The main reason behind the federal extension is the still-troublesome federal insurance marketplace website, healthcare.gov. But that's not the case in California, where the exchange's website is running smoothly.
To people like 59-year-old Farhat Ali, the offer from the state's insurance exchange doesn't make a difference.
"It's completely irrelevant,'' said the Saratoga tech consultant, who is still smarting over the 113 percent price hike he and his wife face as they transition from their current Kaiser health plan to a comparable one that meets the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
"Some people may need more time, but I'm not a procrastinator. So it means nothing to me,'' Ali said. "It's just a lot of bureaucracy.''
Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court, whose group had been fighting to extend the cancellation dates of 900,000 California policyholders through 2014, called the application deadline extension "like throwing a starving man a bone."
"It shows how deep in bed the exchange is with the insurance industry,'' Court said. "It's just a P.R. way of giving a little so that they (board members) are not perceived as giving nothing. It's not meaningful.''
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said Friday that the conversation about policy cancellation began about a year ago when insurers approached the Legislature and Covered California to ask them to require the cancellation of non-compliant policies.
Driving that discussion, Jones said, was money and market dominance.
"Insurers wanted these cancellations to begin with so they could get more market share," Jones said. "Insurers with the smallest market share to begin with had the greatest risk of losing customers who re-up through the exchange."
On Thursday, the board also agreed to extend the deadline for paying for new exchange policies from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5.
Exchange officials on Friday insisted that the move will help many of the consumers affected by the board's 5-0 decision, as well as others who still have not signed up for plans that go into effect on Jan. 1.
"We want to be able to allow more flexibility for our customers,'' said Covered California spokesman Dana Howard.
"We recognize that this period around the holidays might be a time where people simply don't have enough time to sign up by the 15th,'' Howard said. And getting their payments into the mail by Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, would be challenging to many, he said.
Diana Dooley, chairwoman of Covered California's board, said Friday that leading up to Thursday's board meeting, the exchange's staff made the deal with insurance companies to extend the application deadline.
She said staff members had numerous conversations with insurers, consumer advocates and federal partners. Board members, she said, did not participate in those discussions.
But are the new deadlines realistic for insurers to be able to process applications and payments in such a compressed time frame?
Insurance officials contacted Friday acknowledged that it will create major "operational issues'' to review the applications after Dec. 23 and process payments through Jan. 5. But they vowed to make it happen.
"We will be doing our best to meet all the deadlines so that those who have applied and paid for coverage receive it,'' said Stephen Shivinsky, spokesman for San Francisco-based Blue Shield of California.
During Thursday's meeting, Dooley appeared to be the sole board member who seemed most inclined to give those Californians whose individual policies were being canceled some kind of extension.
She said she had initially hoped to pick an option that reduces the pain of people whose medical insurance would become more costly or change in a way they didn't like.
But through the course of public testimony, she said, the board realized that it could not solve the fundamental problems of changing health plans by delaying implementation.
"I went into this a week ago believing that some extra time would be beneficial because I wanted to soften the blow for those experiencing hardship,'' she said. "But I became convinced that if we mitigate that problem, it could create a greater risk to the program we've already invested in for so many others."
Peter Lee, Covered California's executive director, said Thursday that as of mid-November, 71,000 Californians had signed up for plans on the exchange.
In addition to moving the application deadline back a week, Covered California's board on Thursday also agreed to other measures that it believes will help consumers, including:
0 comments:
Post a Comment