By Christopher Perrone, California Health Care Foundation, June 24, 2021
As we start to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, California faces a critical question: Can the state also overcome the long-standing racial health disparities that were so painfully revealed as Californians of color disproportionately fell ill and died of the virus over the last 15 months?
To make any progress toward this goal, California must start with Medi-Cal. The program provides health coverage to 14 million Californians, 80% of whom are people of color and nearly 40% of whom report something other than English as their primary language.
The upcoming process to reprocure commercial Medi-Cal managed care plans — the first ever statewide competition for commercial plans to contract with Medi-Cal — represents an enormous opportunity to make progress on equity in the health care system. More than 11 million Medi-Cal enrollees get their care through a managed care plan. Yet the quality of care received by these Californians is often much worse than for those with other forms of insurance, there are significant disparities in quality by race and ethnicity (PDF), and improvement within Medi-Cal managed care has lagged over the last decade.
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