In California, Asian-Americans flock to health coverage

By Lisa Aliferis, NPR

While Latino enrollment has lagged in California’s insurance marketplace, Asian-Americans have signed up on Covered California in numbers outstripping their representation in the pool of eligible people.

Though Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, has a Vietnamese-language site, many Asian-Americans prefer to buy insurance in person. Photo from Covered California.

According to the latest data from the exchange, the overwhelming majority of Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans enrolling are doing so through certified insurance agents, as opposed to community groups or the Covered California website.

There is no charge to consumers who work with agents, whose commissions are paid by insurance companies.

Since January, Asian-Americans have been enrolling in strong numbers. People of Asian descent make up about 14 percent of eligible people, according to estimates compiled by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center. Asian-Americans reached that target straight out of the gate, making up 13.5 percent of all enrollees by January.

They have surged from there. In the most recent data from Covered California, which comprised enrollment from Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, Asian-Americans made up 22.9 percent of all enrollees.

Licensed insurance brokers can sell customers plans on the Covered California marketplace, but they must first be certified to do so. Covered California says 40 percent of its total Covered California enrollments are coming via these certified insurance agents. But Covered California says that within certain Asian-American groups, the percentage of enrollments through agents is much higher:

57 percent for Chinese-Americans

65 percent of Vietnamese-Americans

70 percent of Korean-Americans

These numbers “suggest that the Asian agents are a driving force in helping Covered CA exceed our enrollment goal in Asian communities,” Wendy McAnelly, a public information officer for Covered California, said in an email.

This information wasn’t a big surprise to Simon Chew. He runs Ehealth-Plans, an insurance business with four offices in San Francisco. All his agents are trilingual, speaking English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Read the full story by Lisa Aliferis from NPR.