Covered CA Unveils Low-Cost Pandemic Relief Health Care

CALIFORNIA — Golden State residents with a health care plan under Covered California are about to see their premiums drop significantly next month.

A significant cash boost from President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan will give the state-run health care program $3 billion in subsidies, allowing the agency to drop its rates for health care starting in May.

A special enrollment period began Monday, and lower rates were automatically triggered for the 1.6 million Californians signed with Covered California, said Peter Lee, Covered California's executive director, at a Monday news conference.

Covered California also launched a $20 million campaign Monday to promote the unusual timing for open enrollment, Lee said. The agency aims to reach Latino, Black, Pacific Islander and Asian American communities hard hit by the pandemic.

"We're not waiting until fall," Lee said. "We are treating [this] as if it's one of our mega-open-enrollment periods."

Typically, the state agency opens enrollment once a year, in the fall, to enroll new members. But Covered California opened enrollment Monday through June.

Funds were injected into the health care program to "provide large benefits to the community who have been most hit by the pandemic, both as a matter of their health as their economic lives," Lee said.

"We're talking about communities of color — in particular, the Latino community — and we're talking about low-income Californians," he said. "Those are the folks that lost their jobs and are still struggling to get back on their feet."

Latino families face higher average unemployment rates and have been heavily affected by the pandemic, Jeffrey Reynoso, executive director of the Latino Coalition for Healthy California, said Monday.

"Latinos are more likely to be essential workers, including farmworkers, restaurant and grocery store workers, trucking and distribution workers, and all the other occupations that made it possible for our economy to keep running," Reynoso said. "If the work of Latinos is is essential, then our work health care should be essential, too."

Some Californians will qualify to pay as little as $1 per month. Those who received unemployment insurance in 2021 are eligible for this plan, Lee said.

"They would be paying only $1 a month for each person in their household for that coverage," he said. "This is getting platinum coverage for almost nothing."

The extra $3 billion cash boost will further reduce premiums that were already lowered by bills signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019. Now, many Californians will see their spending slashed in half, Lee said.

The boost in Affordable Care Act aid will extend through the end of 2022 across the United States.

"It's just going to be a huge savings for me," Mitch Higgins, a Stockton resident and retired firefighter, said at the Monday briefing.

Higgens said his health care was always covered through the city until the city filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Since then, Higgens and his wife have paid close to $20,000 per year for bronze health coverage under the state plan.

"And then this happened, and now I'm able to get help with it, and it's going to be substantial savings for me and my wife," he said.