by Chad Terhune, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2014

 As enrollment neared under the Affordable Care Act, both President Obama and California officials boasted that signing up for health insurance would be as easy as ordering a book from Amazon.com or buying a plane ticket online.

With that in mind, Covered California's executive director, Peter Lee, predicted a bleak future for insurance agents selling individual policies, saying they could easily go the way of travel agents.

As it turns out, reports of their demise were greatly exaggerated. Insurance agents played a major role in California's larger-than-expected enrollment of 1.4 million people in private health plans.

They personally signed up 525,000 Californians — nearly 40% of the state's total, new data show. About the same number signed up on their own using the Covered California website. Read more...

by Dan Diamond, California HealthLine Contributing Editor, April 23, 2014

Joel Ario says he meant it as a compliment.

It was January 2011, and Ario -- the White House's point man on exchanges at the time -- was having dinner with Diana Dooley, California's newly installed HHS secretary. And seeking to praise California, Ario told Dooley that her state had emerged as one of the nation's "pace cars" when it came to implementing the Affordable Care Act.

Dooley quickly corrected him, Ario recalled in an interview with California Healthline this week.

"[Dooley] told me, 'Pace cars don't actually win the race,'" Ario said. "'We want to be the lead car.'"

Forty months later, California's clearly pulled ahead of the pack.

No state signed up more residents during Obamacare's first open enrollment period, or grew its Medicaid rolls by a larger amount. Read more...

From San Francisco Business Times (Rauber, "Bay Area BizTalk," 3/31), et al.

About 1.2 million California residents signed up for health coverage through the state insurance exchange as of 2 a.m. Monday, the last day of open enrollment, the San Francisco Business Times' "Bay Area BizTalk" reports (Rauber, "Bay Area BizTalk," San Francisco Business Times, 3/31).

Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said there was a "huge surge" in interest as open enrollment drew to a close this week (Gorman, "Capsules," Kaiser Health News, 4/1). For instance: 155,988 residents enrolled in coverage through the exchange from March 24 to 2 a.m. on March 31; and 389,840 residents created an account on the exchange during that time (Covered California release [1], 3/31).  Read more...

By Anthony Wilson, California Healthline Contributing Editor, March 19, 2014

Fewer than two weeks remain in the initial open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges, and the Obama administration is nearing the Congressional Budget Office's enrollment projection of six million. What's keeping procrastinators from signing up? Perhaps they're still questioning whether it makes more sense to enroll in coverage or just pay the penalty for not complying with the law's individual mandate.

According to a recent Gallup poll, uninsured U.S. residents remain fairly evenly split on the issue. The poll found that 55% of the uninsured plan to purchase coverage this year and a significant minority (37%) will likely opt to pay the penalty.

Obviously, individuals' personal politics come into play when deciding whether to comply with the ACA's individual mandate. However, for many others -- particularly young adults -- the decision comes to down a purely financial one. This edition of "Road to Reform" explores the factors behind the decision. Read more...

David Greene wonders if the situation he has walked into is the situation that should exist.  Applying this thinking - large and small - he has ventured into a wide array of interests and accomplishments.  Professional results as a healthcare executive have included successful product development and launches, strategic planning and the too often ignored execution of those plans, and operational streamlining.

He does this building on experience gained while working at length with integrated, exchange, and contracted-network healthcare delivery models.  

With Kaiser Permanente for seven years, he began as an in-house consultant focused on distribution channel strategy in California.  His responsibilities steadily expanded to become Director of Sales Operations with national purview.  At Kaiser he led preparations and go-live of Health Care reform broker service strategies, exchange data sharing processes, membership transition marketing, and implementation of newly created market entities such as Private Exchanges.  He has further applied an extensive marketing background having served four years at Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) as Vice President of Marketing for the PacAdvantage small business group exchange (ie. Marketplace) where he drove development of a multi-carrier product offering resulting in 77,000 members.  Prior to his work with PBGH, he quickly rose through the ranks at Health Net where he was Director of Commercial Marketing for the last five of his seven years and part of the team that launched Health Net’s individual and family product line.

Dave holds a Bachelors degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and an MBA with concentration in Marketing, both from California State University, Fullerton.  Enjoying classic cars and having designed and built most of the furniture in his house, he has fostered a proven track record of professional success along with a long a list of home improvement requests from family and friends.

The Tori Group is pleased to add David to its team.

In its February 21, 2014 issue, Sacramento Business Journal brought to light some of the challenges faced by the state's health insurance exchange, Covered California, in recruiting top talent. In an article titled "Top jobs go begging at Covered California," the publication noted that while the agency continues to ramp up, particularly in hiring matters, The Tori Group has filled many staffing gaps in addition to continuing its consulting work there. 

The article notes, "Leesa Tori was hired early on as interim director of health plan management at Covered California. Chief at The Tori Group, she gets kudos from health plans as responsive and helpful during the launch of the program."
Click here for a PDF of the entire Sacramento Business Journal article.

By Steve Peoples & Ken Thomas, Associated Press, February 23, 2014

The explosive politics of health care have divided the nation, but America's governors, Republicans and Democrats alike, suggest that President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is here to stay.

While governors from Connecticut to Louisiana sparred Sunday over how best to improve the nation's economy, governors of both parties shared a far more pragmatic outlook on the controversial program known as "Obamacare" as millions of their constituents begin to be covered. Read more...

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey highlights the challenges that California faced when beginning Affordable Care Act implementation and how the state could offer lessons for others implementing the law, Kaiser Health News reports.

The report surveyed 2,500 California adults in October 2013, before the beginning of open enrollment. Details of FindingsThe report found that many uninsured residents were disconnected from the health care system. Specifically, it found that:

• 50% of uninsured California residents had not had access to health insurance for five years or longer;
• 22% of uninsured residents never had access to health coverage; and
• 25% of uninsured residents said they had a regular physician.

Read more...

By David Gorn, California Healthline Capital Desk, January 30, 2014

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research yesterday released a study that lends credence to one of the primary contentions of health care reform -- providing health care coverage can reduce expensive emergency department use.

"Once you provide coverage to a population and provide preventive services, particularly for chronic conditions, you can expect a decline in emergency room visits over time," said Nadereh Pourat, the center's director of research and lead author of the study. Read more...

By Paul Fronstin, Employee Benefit Research Institute

California Healthcare Foundation's Almanac features California's Uninsured: By the Numbers, by Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. This annual Almanac report provides data on those who are uninsured and their income levels, work status, age, and ethnicity. Read more...