Anti-poverty advocates blasted California’s Obamacare executives for prioritizing the processing of Covered California exchange applications to ramp up enrollment numbers at the expense of processing the 900,000 pending low-income Medi-Cal applicants.
“People who don’t have health care are all in need,” said Executive Director of the County Welfare Directors Association Frank Mecca. “One group was prioritized over another, and I don’t think that’s good public policy.”
According to California officials, as of March 31 roughly 1.9 million people had enrolled in the Medi-Cal welfare program versus the 1.4 million who signed up for private insurance via California’s Obamacare exchange, known officially as Covered California. Indeed, Healthy Cal reports that myriad problems persist with the Medi-Cal system that have culminated into the “largest backlog of Medicaid applications in the nation.”
“There are people who can’t get medications, people who can’t get to the doctor who need to,” said Director of Legislative Advocacy for the Western Center on Law & Poverty Elizabeth Landsberg. “This is people’s health at stake.”