Thread: Affordable Care Act: Long Beach doctors encouraging patients to sign up

Affordable Care Act: Long Beach doctors encouraging patients to sign up

Peter Lee, director of Covered California discusses the states efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act during a town hall meeting at CSULB in Long Beach, CA on Friday, September 6, 2013. SCOTT VARLEY — LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM

By Andrew Edwards, Press-Telegram
Posted: 09/21/13, 6:30 PM PDT | Updated: 30 secs ago

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More stories and a breakdown of the tiers of coverage at Special Section: Affordable Care ActMore info: CoveredCA.com

Despite having a choice of insurance options when the new health care exchange opens next month, Don Porter of Long Beach isn’t sure he’ll buy in.

The 37-year-old is uninsured after changing jobs at the end of 2010, moving from the trash industry to a pool cleaning company. He acknowledged he has some homework to do about the exchange, called Covered California, but is considering doing without; the tax penalty for not having insurance may be less expensive than the premiums, he said.

“I really don’t feel like outside of a surgery I had a few years ago, I really truly needed it,” said Porter, who is single.

“Definitely, if I had a wife and kids it would be a different ballgame,” he added. “I’m in pretty good health, fingers crossed.”
Knowing that the public is still leery about the cost and particulars of coming health reform — called the Affordable Care Act — local clinics and physicians are working hard to get people informed and enrolled.
Dr. Maria Chandler has 22 years of experience treating low-income patients at The Children’s Clinic Family Health Center in Long Beach. She knows many people have doubts about the Affordable Care Act, but she and her colleagues are encouraging their patients to obtain health insurance in accordance with the controversial and oft-confusing law.

“We have to try something, and if this is what we’re going to try, I’m for it,” she said after examining Waymon, a 10-year-old boy who has asthma and needed a check-up as part of his family’s preparations for a new school year.
The Children’s Clinic has seven health centers in Long Beach and one in Bellflower. The clinics serve low-income patients, many of whom are members of the Long Beach area’s Latino and Cambodian minority communities.
Chandler and her colleagues are counseling eligible families to ensure they are signed up for either Medi-Cal, which is being expanded under the new health care law, or the health care exchange established by the state to subsidize health insurance for families who would have difficulty paying for insurance despite not having severe enough financial circumstances to qualify for Medi-Cal.

“We have identified several thousand (patients) that will be enrolling into Medi-Cal,” said Dr. Elisa Nicholas, CEO of The Children’s Clinic. “We have our front office people screening all the people that come in.”
The federal government is leaning heavily on community clinics and health centers to help enroll millions of the uninsured. And in the last few years, the federal government has spent $11 billion to fund thousands of capital expansion projects across the nation. Of that, $200 million has come to California.

The funding has allowed 45 new federally qualified health centers to open in California, said Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president and chief executive officer for the California Primary Care Association. The association represents 900 not-for-profit community clinics and health centers statewide.Even small clinics in California will play a big role in the success or failure of the Affordable Care Act nationwide.
“We expect community health centers to be a one-stop shop for both enrollment and health care services under health care reform,” Castellano-Garcia said.

About 30 percent of the 5.1 million patients who visited health centers in California last year were uninsured, state experts said, which is why the federal government is leaning so heavily on clinics to enroll them. As of next year, Medi-Cal eligibility will be expanded to Californians who earn 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which for a family of four is $23,550 per year.Grocery firm Trader Joe’s recently made the news for the fact that its executives decided to move some part-time employees off company-provided health insurance and instead give them a $500 stipend to buy insurance from the exchange. In a statement, the company reported that 77 percent of employees who work more than 30 hours per week will continue to receive employer-provided health care.

Other employees, those working more than 15 but less than 30 hours per week, will get a stipend. The company estimates more than 70 percent of those employees will end up paying less for insurance from Covered California than they would have through paycheck deductions.A Trader Joe’s employee in Long Beach, who asked not to be identified since crew members are not supposed to talk publicly about the issue, said he will have to rely upon Covered California to have insurance next year.
“I’m only getting paid $11 an hour. I’m really here just for insurance,” the employee said.

“The research I’ve done, (the exchange) actually seems worthwhile. It’s a lot of coverage for a comparable cost,” the crew member added. “I qualify for a lot of subsidy because my income is so little.”Long Beach-based Molina Healthcare is among the health plan providers chosen to participate in the exchange. The company, which also creates health plans for Medi-Cal and Medicare patients, has predicted its revenue will double, to $12 billion by 2015, with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Molina is also training employees to counsel patients on how to enroll for expanded health care.About 5,000 patients now pay cash for services through Molina because they don’t qualify for government insurance such as Medi-Cal, said Gloria Calderon, vice president of clinic operations for Molina, in an emailed response.
“Now they will be able to purchase health insurance with Covered California,” she said. “These cash pay patients are more likely to be low income and most will also qualify for federal cash subsidies too.”

Chandler of The Children’s Clinic, also a UC Irvine professor, acknowledged there are concerns about the sustainability of Covered California and disagreements over whether the Affordable Care Act will raise or lower health care costs. But it’s better to give the attempted reforms a chance to succeed than to stick with the status quo, she said.“Everybody’s worried about the costs,” she said. “I’m more worried about people that don’t have insurance.”

Contact Andrew Edwards at 562-499-1305.

http://www.presstelegram.com/government-and-politics/20130921/affordable-care-act-long-beach-doctors-encouraging-patients-to-sign-up

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