Up to 3.7 million Californians will enroll in new or more affordable insurance through the California Health Benefit Exchange, Medi-Cal expansion Nine out of 10 Californians under the age of 65 will be enrolled in health insurance plans as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a new joint study by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Between 1.8 million and 2.7 million previously uninsured Californians will gain coverage by 2019, when the law’s effect is fully realized, the researchers said.
The report, which uses a sophisticated computer simulation model to project the ACA’s impact on insurance coverage, comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to issue its ruling this month on the constitutionality of the law.
Under the ACA, more than a million Californians with the lowest incomes are set to become eligible as of 2014 for affordable health coverage through an expansion of Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program), while several million more residents from low- and middle-income families will be eligible for subsidies through the new California Health Benefit Exchange, making their coverage more affordable.
Specifically, the researchers project that expansion of Medi-Cal will result in between 1.2 and 1.6 million new enrollees, while between 1.8 million and 2.1 million state’s residents will enroll in subsidized coverage through the Exchange.
As many as 3.7 million uninsured or underinsured Californians will gain access to insurance or switch to better, more affordable policies as a result of the expansion of Medi-Cal and the Exchange.
