Photo courtesy of Covered California.
New sign-ups for California’s health insurance marketplace are down by 25 percent compared to last year. In total about one-million-500-thousand people purchased health care for 2019, but new enrollees fell from 388-thousand to 296-thousand. The executive director for Covered California says the drop may be due to Republicans’ 2017 decision to eliminate the individual mandate penalty. Governor Newsom has proposed restoring the mandate in California and expanding subsidies to buy health insurance.