Covered California Cancelling Undocumented Residents

State officials say more than 10,000 Covered California enrollees still have not verified their immigration status to stay enrolled in the affordable healthcare exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act.

They could have their policies terminated by the end of the month if they don’t provide the proper documentation to confirm their citizenship.

“About 11,000 we had to send pre-termination notices to”, says Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee, “they are in the process of getting notices from their health plan that they will be terminated at the end of the month.”

It’s a deadline that could impact undocumented residents living on the Central Coast.

Their advocates say the concern is about coverage for their legal children who were born in the United States and are eligible.

Undocumented Californians do not qualify for Medi-Cal or Covered California.

State officials say there are an estimated 2 to 2.5 million undocumented immigrants in California and an estimated one million of them are uninsured.

In the meantime, Covered California has begun its 2015 Open Enrollment period with far more employees than it had last year for its initial roll out.

“Last year people waited too long on the phones, we don’t want that to be the case this year”, Peter Lee says, “so what we have done is we are going to have more than 1,300 representatives on the phone helping consumers starting November 15, this compares to last year when we started Open Enrollment we had fewer than 400.”