Over the past few days, soooo may people have reached out to me with concerns about the future of their healthcare access. I wanted to take a moment to reassure everyone as best I can.
Here in California, our state-run exchange Covered California is fully funded through the end of 2017. Nothing can change that. The program hasn’t received any federal funding in years and is currently completely funded by the the state. And Covered California is actually doing really really well. There’s no reason to believe that will change anytime soon. But residents of other states may be a lot worse off.
Many people are concerned that laws about “preexisting conditions” may change on the federal level. Under Obamacare, insurance companies must sell you insurance even if you are already sick. Fortunately, Trump has said that he intends to keep this part of the law in place. Moreover, Republicans are promising to maintain this “guaranteed insurability”, but some proposals would require people to have insurance 100% of the time in order to keep their right to have insurance. That means if you don’t have health insurance at the moment the law changes, you risk losing Obamacare’s protections.
The bottom line is that if you or someone you care about doesn’t currently have health insurance, it’s important that we get them enrolled now before any rules change. In order to have healthcare in place before Trump takes office, you’ll need to enroll by December 15th, 2016.
For anyone who needs coverage or needs to renew, please book a Covered California appointment with me here. I’d be delighted to assist for free over the phone.
If you or a loved one is thinking about skipping the country, I can help with that too. Please book a free international healthcare phone chat with me here.
