For everyone who worries about the launch of the Affordable Care Act, please read this article by Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
It’s not that worries and concerns aren’t justified, as we are 225 days away from coverage expansion on January 1, 2014, and less than five months from open enrollment in October.
It’s that our county has been here before, and the headlines over 45 years ago before the launch of Medicare were remarkably similar–the same scaling up of outreach efforts, the same guessing game about what might happen, the same concerns about capacity, and the same alarm about political resistance, especially in Southern states.
You think our outreach efforts are good? Here’s one example of the success and the type of outreach back then:
Of the 19 million seniors eligible for Medicare, 93 percent enrolled by the summer of 1966. Social Security Administration Commissioner Robert Ball “enlisted the U. S. Forest Service to send Forest Rangers out into the woods in search of elderly hermits whom he might be able to enroll.”
Health Access California promotes quality, affordable health care for all Californians.