Healthcare Digest 6/7: Will California Lead the Nation in Obamacare?

You’re welcome, Californians! President Barack Obama “is making a personal plea to Californians, Latinos and young people to sign up for coverage under the new health care law.”

The sense seems to be: so goes California, so goes the rest of the country. It happened with spandex, fanny packs, and the careers of those two kids named Corey who weren’t brothers somehow?

“California has the country’s biggest insurance market and, with 6 million uninsured residents, it is a crucial part of the effort to get consumers to sign up for coverage, officials said.”

Also this: “The Obama administration is looking for about 7 million people to enroll through the exchanges, and 2.6 million of them need to be younger in order to keep costs down for the overall pool of enrollees, officials said. Nearly one-third of these young people live in three states: California, Texas and Florida.” Because God forbid Baby Boomers have to pay more for their health insurance.

Friday’s Headlines:

[Cue Soundtrack from Alfie]: “With another phase of healthcare reform measures coming in the fall, it’s still unclear for some what the Affordable Care Act means for them.” At some point, those people who don’t understand healthcare are just going to have to cheat off a neighbor, right? [CBS DC]

And ANOTHER THING About That Previous Link: Look: you can either not know about or understand the Affordable Care Act or you can be against the Affordable Care Act. But what you CAN’T be because it EXAUSTS ME PERSONALLY is: against the Affordable Care Act that you don’t understand.

Something Something Something Healthcare Stock Exchange: “When Healthcare Trust of America (HTA) listed on the NYSE back in June 2012, it split its existing shares into four classes of equal size (here is my article on HTA when the company listed). The first class was eligible to trade at the listing, with the remaining shares coming “unlocked” and eligible to trade every six months thereafter.” [Seeking Alpha]

Finally, Something GOOD Attributed to Obamacare: “Federal health officials credited ObamaCare on Thursday for enabling $14.9 billion in healthcare fraud recoveries in the last four years.” Which is kind of a weird statement since the Affordable Care Act hasn’t been around for four years, but: whatever. [The Hill]

Arkansas Has a Blog?: “Will there be enough carriers to create a competitive health insurance marketplace in Arkansas?” [Arkansas Times]

Immigration and Healthcare: You’ve probably heard more about the immigration reform effort in the Senate, but there’s also a group of Democrats and Republicans in the House working on a bill, albeit without much progress so far. That “Gang of Eight” hit a snag yesterday when it lost the support of Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), who brought strong conservative credentials to their effort to rework immigration laws. Labrador left the group because of a dispute over healthcare.” [ABC News]