Time ticking to sign up for health care
By Tracy Seipel, San Jose Mercury News
Lynn Engelman still has no idea whether her doctors in Contra Costa County will be on her new health care plan — and neither, she says, do her doctors.
Capitola resident Kathryn Johnson has already paid the first month’s bill for her new policy through the state’s new health insurance exchange, but she just received a letter telling her she hasn’t signed up for a plan.
And in San Leandro, Linda Entrikin is one of 900,000 Californians suffering from whiplash after the Obama administration’s surprise announcement Thursday that people whose insurance plans have been canceled can replace them with cheap, bare-bones plans after all.
For tens of thousands of Californians still without health insurance, Monday’s deadline to enroll under the president’s new health law feels like an exercise of hurry up and wait. And across the country, government health exchanges are bracing for an avalanche of applications from people who must sign up by end of day Monday if they want coverage to begin Jan. 1.