On October 1st 2013, Covered California launched. It has been one year and while it initially kicked off to a shaky start with numerous website crashes, officials are looking back into the success of the program and prepping for the open enrollment launch next month.
The goal of Covered California in 2014 is to renew participants that enrolled last year as well as encourage eligible participants to sign up. Covered California Director Peter Lee states that they are coordinating numerous outreach plans in their market strategy to make 2014 a success.
Was 2013 Open Enrollment Successful?
- 3.4 million individuals enrolled in Covered California health plans
- California’s uninsured rate was cut in half
- 42% of the pre-determined eligible market enrolled
- Website experiences numerous technical issues and outages during times of high interest
- Call centers had long wait lines
- Finding doctors who would accept coverage for many individuals became an issue
- Complaints and lawsuits filed against Anthem Blue Cross
If you are judging the success of Covered California by how effectively it fulfilled its goal of enrolling applicants, then it could be deemed more successful than most states. However, the true judgement of success should be whether people renew in Covered California. After the technical glitches, high demand for doctors, and website outages, it will be interesting to see how many people continue their plans in 2015.
What Should You Expect In November:
- Premium rates increased by nearly 4.2%
- Ads encouraging 2015 enrollments
- Covered California representatives claim to be working on an improved experience for the consumer.
What do you hope to see from Covered California in 2015?