Free health care starts for 1,700 in Yuba-Sutter

About 1,700 low-income Yuba-Sutter residents will receive free health care coverage beginning Sunday, after the federal government granted a waiver under health care reform for the Path2Health program .

As a result, residents with income at the federal poverty level, or about $10,890 for one person, will be able to get checkups as well as dental and vision screenings, prescriptions, and other services.

Lee Kemper, executive director of the governing board for the County Medical Services Program, said eligibility will expand further when federal health care reform goes into effect in 2014, with access for those making 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Path2Health, which Kemper's group oversees, is designed for people between 19 and 64 who live in one of 34 counties, meet the income standard and federal citizenship and documentation guidelines, and don't qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's low-income health care program.

Kemper said the program goes beyond what the County Medical Services Program already provides by giving eligible residents a higher threshold for when their contribution kicks in. Under CMSP, enrollees are obligated to pay if their monthly income is over $600 a month; the level is about $900 a month for Path2Health.

"They'll have about 50 percent more money to live on," Kemper said. "We hope that'll change how people use their health care."

Enrollees in the new program will use a network of local doctors, hospitals and community health clinics who take CMSP's partner insurance provider, Anthem/Blue Cross.

Harmony Health Medical Clinic in Linda, which already specializes in treating lower-income residents, will likely see another surge of new patients, said clinic director Rachel Farrell.

"This will allow us to do a lot of things like order medication and tests for those patients," Farrell said. "When they're uninsured, or underinsured, you really can't do the job for those things."

But she said she worried reimbursements would still be too low for specialist providers, making it difficult to refer someone to U.C. Davis Health, for example.

At her office on North Beale Road on Wednesday, physician's assistants bounced from room to room seeing patients for everything from creaky joints to stomach flu. At 2 p.m., the waiting room was full.

Clinic patient Gary Calvert, 47, said a lack of insurance kept him from seeing a doctor, though he's had an arthritic hip that now might need to be replaced.

"It's good if they're expanding the service," said Calvert, who worked as a truck driver before he became disabled. "I don't see how people making $10, $15 an hour can afford insurance."

Down the hall, MediCal patient Angela Callier of Linda got a diagnosis she didn't want: Strep throat.

She said she started going to the clinic because it's cheaper than going to the emergency room when she has an issue, a habit people like Farrell and Kemper want to see curbed by expanding access.

Farrell said it's simple math: The cost of medication for high blood pressure versus treating a stroke.

CONTACT reporter Ben van der Meer at 749-4786.