IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Nearly 40,000 residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties signed up for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act during the last three months of 2013.
The total of 39,474 sign-ups means Covered California – the state entity that is administering the federal program – has met about 52 percent of its goal in the Inland Empire for the six-month enrollment period that ends March 31, said Edith Lara-Trad, spokeswoman for Covered California in the Inland Empire.
By comparison, Los Angeles County met 74 percent of its goal by the end of 2013, while Orange and San Diego counties exceeded their goals by 113 percent and 105 percent respectively.
California met 86 percent of its sign-up goal during that time, according to the data, which was released Friday by Covered California and the state Department of Health Care Services.
Ultimately, Covered California wants to register at least 76,069 residents in the two-county region by the end of next month, Lara-Trad said.
Broken down by county, 16,057 San Bernardino County residents signed up for subsidized or non-subsidized “Obamacare” between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, while 23,417 residents of Riverside County registered for the program during that time.
“Those are good numbers, but there’s a lot of work to do if we’re going to meet our goal,” Lara-Trad said of the data. “All we can do is increase our effort during the last two months, and keep pursuing a regional focus. We’re also going to step up our efforts to sign-up more Spanish-speaking residents.”
Registering Inland residents might be more difficult than other regions because the Inland Empire is larger than most of the state’s metropolitan areas with remote, rural communities that are difficult to reach, Lara-Trad said.
Nationwide, the Affordable Care Act must sign up about seven million people by the end of March if the program is to succeed, according to the Obama Administration.
