Covered California enrollment beats projections by wide margin on Central Coast
Six Central Coast counties showed huge gains in enrollment in subsidized and non-subsidized Covered California health insurance plans from February to March. The new total represents a 55 percent increase from the 61,474 enrollments recorded through Feb. 28. Covered California and the California Department of Health Care Services announced 95,499 consumers on the Central Coast have signed up for Affordable Care Act sponsored insurance via Covered California’s health exchange.
The six-month Covered California total also represents 293 percent of the base projection of32,602 enrollments the agency estimated for the region during the entire six-month open-enrollment period.
The Central Coast counties of Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura represent about 7 percent of the statewide enrollment. The local total includes 85,153 consumers eligible for financial subsidies.
Update: Breaking the Central Coast down even further, total enrollments for Monterey through March 31 were 16,523; Santa Cruz County 15,071 and San Benito County 2,121.
Enrollment has ended, yet consumers who experience a qualifying life event can still enroll in a health insurance plan through Covered California.
Qualifying life events include losing health coverage through a job, getting married or entering into a domestic partnership, having or adopting a child, changing where a person permanently lives or gaining citizenship. The next open-enrollment period will be in the fall of 2014. Also, Californians can enroll in Medi-Cal year-round.
For the six-month open enrollment period that ended March 31,1,395,929consumers enrolled in plans statewide.The total increased 58.6 percent from the 880,082 consumers who enrolled by the end of Feb. 28. Covered California reached 1 million consumers enrolled on March 14.
