By Maya Meinert and Vincent Lim
If you didn’t know it, you might think it was a party.
There’s music, food, a live talk show complete with host, guests and video clips—even a “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” type game show with prizes. People ask questions, they engage each other, they laugh.
But looks aren’t always what they seem.
The purpose of events like this are for seniors to learn about California’s Coordinated Care Initiative, an Affordable Care Act program that attempts to coordinate the delivery of Medicare and Medi-Cal health benefits into a single system for those eligible for both with the goal of improving the integration of all forms of care.
Advocates for African American Elders (AAAE) at the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging has so far held three events like these to get the word out about the Coordinated Care Initiative, and especially its Cal MediConnect program whose job is to streamline delivery of care, mostly because dual-eligible seniors will either be passively enrolled in a participating health plan or have to opt out by January 1, 2015. To ensure continuity of care with their preferred health care providers, seniors will need to make a decision one way or another.