Op-Ed By Dr. Stanley Frencher, Jr.
Health care has been personal for me my entire life.
My father, Stanley Frencher, Sr., was and still is a physician in Detroit. He continues to make house calls as an internist, and his dedication to his work when I was a child inspired me to utilize my talents in a way that would have the broadest impact. Watching my father provide health care to those in need in the neighborhoods of East Detroit led me to follow in his footsteps.
I’m now doing what I consider to be a dream job, as the medical director of surgical outcomes and quality at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles. It has allowed me to achieve my goal of practicing in underserved areas.
I was still doing my urology residency training at Yale when President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed into law in 2010. I was excited about it then, and I remain enthusiastic about it now. The federal health reform law was a monumental step in providing quality health care to all Americans — not just those who could afford it.
The historic Affordable Care Act is now in its third open-enrollment period, and there is still time to sign up by Jan. 31 and get covered for the rest of 2016.
Covered California, the state’s marketplace for the Affordable Care Act, estimates that there are currently about 750,000 uninsured Californians eligible for subsidies, and an additional 1.4 million people statewide are believed to qualify for low-cost or no-cost Medi-Cal. If you are one of those still uninsured, now is the time to act.
Individuals signing up for a plan through Covered California will be purchasing private plans from some of the top insurance companies in the nation — and nine out of 10 who enroll with Covered California get help paying their monthly premium. The agency reports that half of its consumers — more than 670,000 people — pay less than $100 per month for their coverage, with many paying as little as $10 a month. That is real people saving real money, while getting the peace of mind they deserve and the care they need.
A Covered California survey found that more than one-third of all the remaining subsidy-eligible uninsured consumers were unaware of the tax credit available to help lower the monthly costs of health coverage. Of those uninsured, African-Americans were less aware than others about the tax credit available to help them pay for insurance. Let’s change that by making those around us aware of the help that is available.
Over the past two years, I’ve witnessed numerous patients who went years without properly treating health issues (diabetes, asthma, arthritis and surgical illnesses), but thanks to the coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act, they finally received the necessary care. It is very rewarding to provide that kind of relief. Many who have gone for years without coverage are astonished by the quality of medical facilities and care now available to them.
If you have remained on the sideline without coverage, now is the time for you to take your own monumental step and sign up for health insurance. And once you do, tell your friends and family members to get covered as well. Covered California has served more than two million consumers since it opened its doors in January of 2014, and millions more have been newly enrolled in Medi-Cal.
Consumers should know there are multiple ways to enroll, including enrolling online at www.CoveredCA.com, calling (800) 300-1506 to enroll over the phone and finding in-person help in their communities. Enrollment locations can be found by visiting www.CoveredCA.com/get-help/local and searching for enrollment help by ZIP code.
