Covered California Official Says Exchange Is Alive And Well

It's a curious time to enter a new open enrollment period for covered California but that is what is happening today. Open enrollment for California's help exchange begins November 1 and extends through the month of January. Despite the uncertainty hovering around the fate of the Affordable Care Act in Washington DC covered California says they're going full steam ahead hoping to enroll as many of the remaining uninsured as possible. Joining me is Peter Lee, executive director of covered California. After all that's been in the news about the times to destroy the Affordable Care Act, what is the pitch you are using to get people to sign up this year?The major thing is we are going strong. All the chatter in Washington is distant thunder on the horizon and the reality here in San Diego and LA in Oakland is that we continue to have a really good choice of private health plans, we continue to have financial help that is solid through 2018 and beyond that's helping over 1.1 million people get coverage and it's easy to sign up. Is such as business as usual. Were working to continue to make things better for people.I want to talk about that stability in a moment. The White House had said it makes sense to spend less on outreach this year because the past several years have done a good job of letting people know about the exchanges. So my question is why are you launching a multimillion dollar ad campaign?With all due respect, this is a place where the White House is wrong. What we spend a lot of money on over the last few years is on marketing. We know that for every dollar we spend on marketing, we lowered the premiums that people pay between five dollars and seven dollars. That's because enrolling more people means enrolling help your people, which lowers the cost for everybody. I don't know who made the decision but it was a bad one for consumers.About how many people are still uninsured?That is a moving figure because it's about two and half million that have no insurance today. Half of them are undocumented individuals. Others are eligible for Medicare. More importantly than the numbers it's not the same people who are uninsured will we open our doors in 2014. Something we found is that 40% of the people that sign up to cover California leave each year. That is good news. They leave because they get employer-based coverage. That is what we want the individual and market to work as. Were hoping to have 400,000 people sign up in open enrollment. Again, it's not the same people which is why we have to be out there spending money on advertising.Cover California has announced that premiums will rise on average of 12% next year. Is that due to the unstable insurance markets created by efforts to replay the ACA?About 85% of the people that signed up to cover California get financial help. They have lower premiums. For those people, their cost for health insurance is going to go down. The premium increase of about 12% is for people that get no subsidy at all. For them, what we do is help their prices stay lower than it would be by having a good healthy risk of mix and that's what it's about. California is doing a better job than much of the nation. There's really hitting the middle-class worse because those are the people that get no financial help.There are thousands of people across California who don't qualify for those tax credits. If they stay with their silver to your plans are going to go up, they're going to be a lot more. What would you advise them to do?The thing I advise him to do is shop but also recognize that something we had to do this year is the Trump administration stopped making a payment to health plans to support lower cost for lower income Californians. So health plans are loading those costs onto their silver plans but not -- if you're buying a silver plan, you get no subsidy in your bind that plant directly from Kaiser or Blue Shield, there will be no more surcharge. You not to be stuck with a higher rate because of our work around. If you get a subsidy, it's going to go up so were doing everything we can in the face of uncertainty and shifting sand in Washington to make sure here in California people have stability.As to the stability of covered California anthem Blue Cross pulled out of most of the state leaving more than 150,000 people looking for new plants. Why would they leave if things are as stable as we are seeing.We've had 11 plans the end of last year and all of them are staying next year with the exception of anthem. This compares to much of the nation that they been whipsawed by big plans like United in CIGNA leaving the market because they could make it work. We've made the insurance marketplace work for the vast majority of plans and they are staying in. Anthem are leaving and too bad for them and their shareholders. It is going to be a distraction for some consumers but over 80% of the doctors who were contracted to anthem are another health plans. So the number one thing I want to tell consumers is if you need to change, you have a lot of options in the vast majority of cases your doctors going to be those other options.With the top, you hear from confuse people this fall as a navigate buying insurance.The number one question that I've heard is they think that the financial help is gone away. They've heard the president say Obamacare is gone. They've heard a whole range of things in the number one messages the Affordable Care Act is the law. The effort to repeal it has failed. It's going to be the law for years to come in any changes will take years after that. So we have financial help that is big and real that gives people the sort of leg up that many of us it to her employer. None of us could afford healthcare without that leg up. It is still here for people and it will be for long time.I've been speaking with Peter Lee. You can find more information at their website. Thank you.