Tag: Medi-Cal

The Uninsured and the Safety Net

Open enrollment in California has ended, and preliminary tallies indicate that more than 3 million Californians will be enrolled in health plans through Covered California or will become new members of the Medi-Cal program. While it is still too soon to tell how many uninsured people have gained coverage, projections suggest about 4 million Californians will still lack health insurance. About 30 percent of these uninsured residents are estimated to be eligible for Medi-Cal and can enroll at any time during the year.

Uninsured residents who are not eligible for ACA coverage because they are undocumented immigrants—and those who did not purchase coverage through Covered California during the open enrollment period—will continue to rely on county programs and safety net providers, such as health clinics and emergency departments (EDs).

Access to these resources varies considerably across the state. Eligibility for indigent programs differs across counties, as there are no state standards for services provided or populations served. For example, most county indigent programs do not cover undocumented immigrants; these residents rely on clinics and EDs, particularly in counties that do not operate public hospital systems. Also, many counties set relatively low income thresholds for their indigent programs, limiting the number of uninsured residents who qualify for services.

Because the Medi-Cal expansion will cover many of the people currently served by county indigent care programs, the state is shifting funds previously allocated to county health programs. This fiscal year, state funding for county health programs was reduced by $300 million (under AB 85); there will be deeper cuts in subsequent years, as more Californians gain insurance coverage. The state will determine future funding reductions in consultation with the counties. In most cases, counties have selected a formula-based approach that accounts for the actual costs and revenues associated with indigent care programs to determine how much funding will be shifted back to the state.

Over the next several years, it will be important to monitor how these and other changes affect both safety net providers—including counties and public hospital systems—and the communities that continue to rely on them for health care.

How Does Access to Care Affect Health?

Enrolling eligible, low-income Californians—including the 1.7 million uninsured projected to be eligible for Medi-Cal—is the focus of Affordable Care Act implementation right now. But in the longer term, there is a bigger question: How will the expansion of Medi-Cal under the Affordable Care Act impact the medical care and health of those who gain coverage?

It may come as a surprise, but the effect of insurance on health care use and outcomes is not well understood. The best recent evidence we have comes from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a collaborative effort among academic researchers and state health department officials to evaluate how access to public insurance affects the health of low-income residents.

Early results from this rigorous study, which began in 2008, indicate that people who gain Medicaid coverage use more health care services—both inpatient and outpatient. The study found improvements in primary care access and significant increases in the use of preventive care such as mammograms and cholesterol screening. Medicaid coverage also reduced observed rates of depression and greatly reduced financial hardships and medical debt. But these positive results were not accompanied by signs of improved physical health outcomes, such as changes in blood pressure or cholesterol levels, and the study found evidence of increased use of emergency rooms among those who gained Medicaid coverage.

Of course, these results are from a short period of time: the first one to two years of coverage. If people are able to maintain coverage and consistent contact with providers, we could see improvements in health outcomes and decreased use of high-cost care settings such as ERs over time.

The good news is that these improvements may have gotten a head start in California.Before this year’s Medi-Cal expansion under the Affordable Care Act, the state expanded access to more services and better coordinated care through county-based programs under a federal waiver designed to prepare California for health care reform. This means that more than 600,000 uninsured residents, who will comprise a large share of new Medi-Cal enrollees this year, were brought into systems of care and already had the opportunity to receive needed services. This could mean that utilization in California will not increase as much as it did in the Oregon experiment. Evaluations of these county-based programs suggest that hospitalizations and ER visits could be reduced, but this will probably take longer than one or two years.

So while there is promising evidence of the benefits expanded Medicaid coverage can offer, including financial protection and increased use of preventive and primary care, it will probably take some time to bring about other desired changes.