The 'bad old days': Two-thirds of California's 6.6 million uninsured lacked coverage for more than a year prior to health reform

More than 4.1 million of the state's uninsured ― 12.6 percent of the state's nonelderly population ― went without insurance for more than a year in 2013, and an additional 2.5 million fell in and out of the ranks of the insured, according to a new UCLA Center for Health Policy Research fact sheet. The Center conducts the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) on which the fact sheet is based.   As the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enters its second year of enrollment and implementation, the release of 2013 CHIS data will help illustrate the change between then and now.    "Despite the ongoing fight over health care reform, what these numbers show is how dire the situation was prior to its implementation," said Shana Alex Charles, director of the Health Insurance Studies Program at the Center. "These were the 'bad old days' that we don't want to go back to."   As in the past, nonelderly Californians who had health coverage through their own or a family member's employer made up most of the insured: 16.4 million people, or 50.5 percent of those insured. That percentage ― a point higher than in the two previous years ― marked a small recovery in jobs with health benefits, according to the study, but was still close to a historic low.   A little more than six million people had health benefits through the state's safety-net programs, Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, a slight drop to 18.8 percent. And the percentage of those who bought insurance on the individual market ticked up slightly, but remained statistically flat at 5.5 percent, or 1.8 million people.    As of April 2014, the new state insurance marketplace enrolled 1.2 million people in six months, 650,000 of them were previously uninsured, while Medi-Cal rolls expanded by 1.5 million, according to the report. Charles says both are evidence of the ACA's success.
Read the fact sheet: Six and a Half Million Californians Lacked Insurance in 2013   The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the California Department of Public Health and the California Department of Health Care Services provided funding for this fact sheet.

About the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. UCLA CHPR improves the public’s health through high quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that informs effective policymaking. UCLA CHPR is the home of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) and is part of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For more information, visit healthpolicy.ucla.edu.