Covered California Enrollment 'Very Strong' So Far

More than 290,000 people have signed up on Covered California, the state's health insurance marketplace, officials announced Wednesday. That number includes both people who qualify for private health insurance on the exchange or Medi-Cal.

Open enrollment started Nov. 15. Of the 130,000 people who have qualified for Covered California, nearly 50,000 of them have both completed the application and selected a plan. That compares to about 30,000 people who selected a plan during the first month of open enrollment last year.

In a press call, Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, called that pace "very strong." People have until Monday to sign up for coverage that will start Jan. 1. "We expect that the next few days and this weekend, we'll see continued and even growing interest in enrollment," Lee said.

Covered California is running 40 enrollment events across the state between Wednesday and Monday, Lee said. Many of the events are in both English and Spanish.

Lee stressed that the numbers reported Wednesday are new enrollment. Open enrollment runs until Feb. 15.

These new enrollees are counted separately from people who signed up last year, and need to renew their policy. For those people to continue their insurance, Lee said that they need to simply pay their bill this month, and they will be automatically renewed. People who want to switch plans need to do so by Monday.

Medi-Cal Enrollments

Just over 160,000 of the 290,000 people who have signed up on the Covered California site so far qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for people who are low income.

Last year, two million new people enrolled in Medi-Cal, as part of the expanded eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. But the state's Department of Health Care Services, which oversees the program, came under withering criticism when it was unable to process applications in a timely fashion. By July, 900,000 applications were backlogged.

Toby Douglas, director of the department, said that changes have been made in the online sign up and that applicants' information is "being reviewed electronically." He said that 75 percent of new applicants had already been approved for coverage and were "immediately enrolled into Medi-Cal."

Meanwhile, last year's backlog was cut to 250,000 by September. In Wednesday's call, Douglas said that the pending cases are under 100,000 now. "We are getting close to getting the number down to zero," he said, and expects to be "reporting soon" on the backlog.

Douglas was optimistic that a backlog would not grow anew this year. "We strongly believe we will be able to keep these pending cases down as we got into 2015," he said.

Last year about 1.4 million people signed up for health insurance on Covered California by the end of open enrollment. About 1.2 million people who signed up last year are still in the program. Those people must renew by Dec. 15 to avoid an interruption in their coverage. Lee said he would report in January about renewal numbers.

Covered California has said it seeks to enroll an additional 500,000 people by the end of open enrollment on Feb.15, bringing total Covered California enrollment to 1.7 million.