Bridge to Medi-Cal Available for Low-Income Residents

Amid stories of people struggling to sign up for federal and state healthcare exchanges, Los Angeles County offers a success story -- at least for its neediest residents.

The county's Department of Health Services has enrolled roughly 290,000 people in Healthy Way LA, a bridge program that will transition seamlessly to Medi-Cal under the Affordable Care Act as of Jan. 1, according to DHS Director Dr. Mitchell Katz.

County workers have been doing community outreach for more than two years, tracking down low-income residents who qualify for the coverage well before the state exchange, Covered California, opened for business Oct. 1.

California is one of 26 states and the District of Columbia that agreed to expand eligibility for Medicaid under the new healthcare reform law.

Anyone under 65 whose family income is at or below federal guidelines -- $15,856 for an individual or $32,499 for a family of four, for example -- qualifies for Medicaid, known in California as Medi-Cal.

Los Angeles County created Healthy Way L.A. as a bridge program. Those enrolled don't have to do anything to keep their coverage and can keep seeing the doctors they're already using.

"There's nothing they have to do unless they're unhappy with where they are," said Amy Luftig Viste, director of community partner programs for DHS.

Medi-Cal is free to those insured and will be 100 percent federally funded for the next three years. After that, states will have to pick up some of the cost.

Officials for states that opted out of the expansion have expressed concern about the sustainability of the program and their capacity to pick up part of the tab over time.

It's hard to track where the county stands relative to other states that made early efforts to enroll uninsured Medicaid-eligible residents, because much of the reporting has focused on enrollments through exchanges. But 290,000 newly insured patients comes very close to meeting DHS' original goal of 300,000 enrollments. And enrollment will continue through Dec. 31.

Katz also told the board that he expected the DHS to run a surplus for the next two fiscal years: $11.5 million for the year ending June 30, 2014 and $150.2 million for the year ending June 30, 2015.

That represents a big enough change in the department's fortunes for Supervisor Michael Antonovich to apologize for saying that Katz wasn't his first choice for the director's job.

Katz cautioned that the numbers were preliminary. He said he'd be back in March with more information on the cost of care and how services are being used by the newly insured.

- City News Service