County Rolling Out Obamacare Plan

Santa Barbara County’s Health Department estimates there are 25,000 county residents who are eligible for health insurance once the federal Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — kicks in January 1, 2014. To this end, the department just accepted a federal grant of $233,000 to sign as many new enrollees up as possible. That money will pay for eight new contractors — bilingual, computer literate, and preferably veterans — to sign up those eligible for any of the new Health Insurance Exchanges still to be worked out at the state level. In addition, they will sign up individuals eligible for expanded Medi-Cal, estimated to be 6,000. County Health is not the only entity signing new enrollees up; nonprofits like the United Way have received funding to do the same.