Covered California reaches out to LGBT community

Striding tall on a run of good press about Covered California’s high rate of youth-participation and the overall efficacy of its Web site, the executive director of this state’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment campaign laid out the reasons LGBTs should enroll and rejoice in the coming of “Obamacare” during a town hall this week.

“The gay community knows better than anyone about the best and worst of our health care system,” said Peter V. Lee, Covered California’s executive director. Noting that decades ago, he worked at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which hosted the meeting, Lee said LGBT organizations have stepped up to provide health care to our community when government programs were lacking or non-existent.

“We know the experience of government inaction when there were many years of non-response to the epidemic of AIDS,” Lee said. “We know the worst of health care when benefits are denied based on health conditions. Men living with HIV/AIDS and women who have had breast cancer are turned away at the door. That’s been the norm. With the Affordable Care Act, that’s a thing of the past. No one can be turned away as of Jan. 1.”

Covered California has launched a marketing-and-outreach campaign aimed at persuading California’s LGBT population to meet a Dec. 23 deadline for signing up for coverage at CoveredCa.com.

According to Lee, some could experience a lapse in coverage after Jan. 1 if they do not sign up for coverage at CoveredCa.com by Dec. 23, either under an expanded MediCal program – or for private insurance (with a subsidized premium for many, if not most).

“The LGBT community faces significant health disparities and challenges when compared to our heterosexual brothers and sisters,” said Christopher Brown, director of Health and Mental Health Services at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center.

“Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth are two-and-a-half times more likely to attempt suicide. And, approximately fifty percent of transgender adults have had suicidal ideation, compared to two percent of heterosexual adults. LGBT youth are twice as likely to smoke cigarettes … Latina and white bisexual and lesbian women are about twice as likely to be without health insurance as their heterosexual neighbors.”

Brown, who also noted that men who have sex with men account for 81 percent of new cases of HIV infection, said that those inequalities are unfair and unjust.

“But, perhaps most importantly,” he said. “They are completely avoidable.”

He called the Affordable Care Act a “game-changer” for LGBT people who have not been able to obtain health insurance on the open market because of exorbitant premiums or denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.

According to Brown, many LGBTs have found plans they bought to be inadequate because of caps on coverage. For gay men living with HIV, buying health insurance was no more than a pipe dream, he said.

Visit LGBTweekly.com for more information about how Covered California may affect you and your family.