UHC emphasizes that everyone, including individuals and communities, has access to the health care they require without facing financial hardship. California demonstrates how innovative policy and appropriate investments can significantly reduce the number of uninsured people in the country. It includes the full spectrum of essential, high-quality health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course.
- In 2007, then California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats debated health care reform proposals to achieve universal coverage through strategies like purchasing pools, an individual mandate, and subsidies to help people pay premiums.
- Three years later, Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the ACA has survived 3 Supreme Court challenges, the most recently decided by a 7-2 majority in June 2021. The legislation also escaped a concerted repeal effort in Congress by 1 vote, thanks to late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
- Throughout these ordeals, the objectives of the ACA have remained the same as those advanced by California policymakers almost 15 years ago: to ensure everyone has access to high-quality health coverage and care and to make health care more affordable for all.
- Under Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, enrollment in the state’s ACA health care exchange, Covered California, has reached a high of 1.6 million, second only to Florida. Covered California offers a robust health care coverage marketplace in which premiums are negotiated by a powerful state purchaser, and individuals can conveniently shop for high-quality coverage among health plans that must compete on cost and quality.
- Kaiser Permanente strongly supports and has always supported achieving universal coverage. In California, and each of the 8 states and the District of Columbia in which we serve, Kaiser Permanente is as committed as ever to building on recent successes of providing health coverage to more people, while also addressing the urgent issues of affordability and health equity.