Covered CA: This is what happens when you don't have the GOP or Tea Party standing in the way.

For example, the state and advocates focused on successfully growing California's Medicaid program, a decision that's been somewhat overlooked in recent months with all of the attention on the exchange. More than 600,000 state residents got coverage through California's early expansion of Medi-Cal, the Low-Income Health Plan. And "we spent literally tens of millions of dollars [reaching out] to the lowest-income people," says Daniel Zingale of the California Endowment.

The state and community groups also planned to pour more than $200 million dollars into exchange-related awareness and outreach, and while some of the marketing materials were panned as being too dry and earnest -- Covered California made a commitment to stay away from "funny" advertisements -- the final numbers speak for themselves, several state officials told California Healthline.

Even when the exchange's website crashed under demand in early October, California was able to weather its early difficulties and bounce back -- a pattern of flexibility that generally persisted throughout the enrollment period.

Meanwhile, the other purported pace cars couldn't keep up, largely because of technical failures. Maryland's website stalled out. Oregon's never got out of the gate. Even vaunted Massachusetts had problems with its exchange's engine.

California's aggressive pursuit of Obamacare implementation allowed the state to maximize year one of coverage expansion, experts say. For example, when Covered California released its latest enrollment update last Thursday, the sheer totals were striking. As of April 15:

1.4 million people had signed up for private plans through the exchange -- about twice as many as expected;
1.9 million people had enrolled in Medi-Cal, with 1.1 million coming through the exchange and 600,000-plus coming through the Low Income Health Plan; and
1.3 million Latinos had obtained coverage through the exchange or Medi-Cal.


http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/April/28/California-Healthline-Exchange-leads-victories.aspx