Obamacare sign-up numbers called solid

Slightly more than one-half million California residents signed up for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act during the last three months of 2013.

During the same period, about 584,000 applicants were declared likely eligible for Medi-Cal coverage, and 630,000 state residents were moved into Medi-Cal from the state’s low-income healthcare program, according to data released Tuesday by Covered California and the state Department of Health Care Services.

The Affordable Care Act – better known as Obamacare – is starting to gain some momentum, and the number of sign-ups during the fourth quarter of last year shows a strong demand for health insurance in California, said Larry Hicks, spokesman for Covered California in Sacramento.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we feel like we’re headed in the right direction,” Hicks said. “We’re still getting a lot of traffic on our website and a high volume of phone calls. A lot of people have been waiting for something like this so they could get health coverage, and they’re taking advantage of it.”

Covered California is the state’s enrollment portal for the federal Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Of the 500,108 California residents who have signed up for Affordable Care coverage so far, 424,936 are eligible for some form of federal subsidy. The Affordable Care Act allows for federal subsidies that are based on a person’s income level.

Covered California’s goal was to sign up nearly 700,000 subsidy-eligible residents by March 31, a goal it could reach based on the number of sign-ups so far that are in that category, Hicks said.

Nationwide, at least seven million people must sign up for the Affordable Care Act in order for it to be viable, according to Obama Administration officials.

A county-by-county breakdown of enrollment figures, including Riverside and San Bernardino counties, is expected to be released next week.

As many as five million Californians who don’t have health insurance might be eligible for Obamacare, and Covered California’s goal is to sign up every one of them. Unlike the federal website, Covered California’s site hasn’t been plagued by technical glitches and has enjoyed a reasonably smooth rollout.

“We’ve had some issues, but we tried to deal with them as soon as they happened,” Hicks said.