L.A. County Preps for Medi-Cal 2014, Signs Up 24K Patients for No-Cost Healthcare
Beginning in 2014, millions of uninsured Californians will be eligible for Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor, under President Obama's controversial healthcare overhaul. L.A. County is setting the stage for this massive revamping. The county hopes to register as many as 550,000 patients and assign them to medical clinics for free services before Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, takes over in 2014.
California will use federal dollars to fund the healthcare expansion and expects to receive $2.3 billion to expand and modernize Medi-Cal. L.A. County is focusing more on primary care and less on acute care. The changes should reduce costs, streamline care and attract patients.
Newly insured L.A. County residents in 2014 will have the option to seek treatment wherever they want. Health leaders recognize that to keep them with the county, they must make the system one of choice instead of a last resort. "Our survival depends on it," said Mitchell Katz, director of the county Department of Health Services, reports LA Times. Should the healthcare system fail to improve, "if people have choice, they won't choose us and the system will implode," added Katz.
Apparently health departments across the U.S. are keeping watchful eyes on L.A. County. If the county is successful, its model could be used in other healthcare systems. The fact that nearly one-quarter of the 9.8-million population is uninsured makes the scale of the feat "mind-boggling," according to Andy Schneider, a consultant to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Health workers have enrolled 24,000 patients in Healthy Way L.A. since July. County residents are eligible for this program if they are between 19- and 64-years-old, are citizens or permanent residents of five years and earn less than 133% of the federal poverty level (about $14,500 for an individual and $29,700 for a family of four, according to LA Times). The said coverage is not insurance, but it does give patients the ability to receive free primary and specialty care, mental health services, chronic disease management, medication and emergency treatment.
The county will pay for half of the cost for Healthy Way L.A. over the next two years, and the federal government will cover the remaining half. Each half will total about $300 million. Once the patients become eligible for Medi-Cal in 2014, the federal government will cover the entire cost.
Advocates are tracking the expansion and have already discovered several problems, like the lack of translated documents, delays in setting up appointments and extensive patient paperwork, as noted by Barbara Siegel, managing attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles. "We have to get it right so that in 2014, the county continues to play that critical role in providing healthcare to our indigent population," Siegel said.
Why plan ahead? "We are taking this two years to get fully ramped up so we are ready on Day One," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the California advocacy group Health Access. "The more Los Angeles [County] enrolls people in the next two years, the more folks will be on the federal rather than the county dime."
