Covered California gives deadline reprieve

After a remarkable debut of signing up 1.1 million in Obamacare’s first enrollment year, just 200,000 more people signed up last year – 400,000 short of Covered California’s goal. In-person enrollment assistance can be found by visiting www.CoveredCA.com/get-help/local and searching for enrollment help by ZIP code.

Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, will stop taking new applications for 2016 insurance policies come 11:59 p.m. Sunday.

Covered California officials extended the open enrollment deadline to the state-run marketplace for health insurance after tens of thousands of applicants flooded the website in recent days.

“You no longer have to gamble on something as important as your health, because there is financial assistance available to help bring you and your family quality health care coverage, ” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, in a statement. Covered California says that 670,000 enrollees paid $100 a month or less for their coverage in 2015 and that 350,000 enrollees paid $50 or less per month.

He said that while that may seem cheaper to some than the cost of an annual health insurance plan, “they are doing bad math”.

Do you have to pay back the previous year’s subsidy if your income increases? “We’ve been trying very hard to get the word out”. But it’s hoping it can add from 295,000 to 450,000 people this year. “The amount of the subsidy is based on your income and we will adjust your subsidy down if you get a bump in income”. Medi-Cal enrollment takes place year-round.

The number of uninsured CSU students has been reduced significantly to fewer than 10 percent from 25 percent with the new health coverage options, according to Cal State Los Angeles professor Walter Zelman, who spearheaded the Health Insurance Education Project that educates CSU students about health care reform and coverage enrollment. Insurance companies would also frequently limit what they would pay and cancel coverage when someone contracted a serious illness. If you’ve gone over that cliff, this is not great solace, but if your insurance costs more than 9 percent of your income, then there’s no penalty for you not having insurance.