“Emily aggressively covers the Affordable Care Act in California through a consumers lens, delivered in a bi-weekly column. “Ask Emily” has become the authoritative source for thousands of consumers seeking answers after being caught in the ACA’s bewildering bureaucratic snares. The four stories submitted for the contest illustrate her watchdog role: In one column she exposed practices at Covered California–the state insurance exchange–that result in cancellation of people’s policies without their knowledge. In another she reported that consumers who call the agency to report changes in their income–as required by the ACA–can see their policies cancelled without explanation. In another she went to bat for people who applied months earlier for Medicaid under the ACA expansion but were still waiting for coverage. And in the fourth column she discovered that many consumers transitioning to Medicare couldn’t get out of their Covered California plans and payments. The four stories submitted for consideration are a fraction of Emily’s work (a total of 46 columns as of Jan. 16) which consistently exposed problems in the state’s Affordable Care Act implementation. Importantly, Emily’s columns also provide consumers with specific advice and resources on how, and where, to get help. And they break news. For example, she was the first to write about the exchange cancelling policies and shifting people to Medi-Cal (Aug. 26), which was picked up by AP with credit to her. Her story about Medicare-eligible consumers’ inability to cancel Covered California plans (Dec. 2) was an exclusive. She is the only one in California writing about this issue.”
