Orange County<\/a> health leaders said the area\u2019s health care plan for low-income patients has fewer participants in part because of new eligibility requirements.<\/p>\nSome patients cite immigration enforcement activity as the reason for disenrolling.<\/p>\n
The decline in enrollees will likely make it difficult for clinics to keep up operations.<\/p>\n
Cassandra Rossel, communications director at Families Together of Orange County Community Health Center in Tustin, said the facility\u2019s staff is already stretched thin.<\/p>\n
She said each of the center\u2019s providers sees about 20 patients a day.<\/p>\n
The center relies on Medicaid reimbursements and receives little funding from the federal government, Rossel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure our patients have continuity of care, but that will cost us,\u201d Rossel said. \u201cWe will have to look at the extra wrap-around services we provide.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center offers transportation and a food pantry, but it might not be able to provide those anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said a resource and health fair held last weekend drew just a sixth of the number who showed up to the same event two years ago.<\/p>\n
Sarmiento, who is also on CalOptima\u2019s board, cited immigration fears as why residents are using community services less.<\/p>\n
In July, it was reported that the Trump administration gave ICE agents access to the personal data of 79 million people enrolled in Medicaid.<\/p>\n
Lost coverage can lead to delayed care and more emergency room visits, which will cost taxpayers more.<\/p>\n
New California state rules include a $130,000 asset limit for Medi-Cal enrollees and a freeze in enrollment for undocumented adults who are 19 and older.<\/p>\n
Patients already enrolled in the program will have to pay $30 a month to keep full coverage after July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 27,000 CalOptima patients opted out of the healthcare program in the last two months, and providers are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1280,48,52,51,47,50,49,611],"class_list":{"0":"post-197628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-health-care","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","14":"tag-los-angeles-news","15":"tag-orange-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}