Covered California tour stops in Chico

CHICO — State and Butte County leaders on Monday discussed access and affordability for insurance and rural health care, giving a chance for local attendees to understand the current state of health care in the north state.

Covered California, the state’s official health insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act, hosted a closed panel discussion at Enloe Health as one of its stops on its “For the Love of California” tour across the state.

Enloe Health Chief Medical Officer Sean Maiorano read questions for California Department of Public Health Assistant Health Officer Rita Nguyen, Covered California Chief Medical Officer Monica Soni and Butte County Public Health Officer Jarett Beaudoin.

Beaudoin told this newspaper Monday that affordable health insurance and access to critical care remains a top issue among providers in Butte County.

“Getting in to see the doctor is really important, and certainly issues in Glenn County, with Glenn Medical Center closing down, has impacted us a little bit. It’s not really Butte-centric, but Oroville Hospital’s bankruptcy certainly makes me nervous,” Beaudoin said. “It’s one of the one things that wake me up at night.”

The panel talked about the driving costs of insurance, with some plans increasing about $1,000 per year after federal finance assistance expired; preventative medicine; critical care accessibility and rural hospitals, and vaccinations.

Cost of insurance

Soni said about 47% of new members at Covered California are “struggling to make their ends meet,” and in 2025 the provider lost $2.5 billion in federal funding, offset by just $190 million from the state.

Maiorano said the percent of uninsured California residents dropped from 16% to 6% in the past 10 years; but in 2025, the trend changed and Butte County saw about a 4% decrease in enrollments with about 9,000 people currently not covered, according to Soni.

Soni said middle income families in Butte County were heavily impacted in 2025, adding that Covered California saw a 53% decrease for this income level in the count. Conversely, low income families here saw a 19% increase in enrollment that year, she said.

Nguyen said research shows that communities or states that gain new insurance have decreased mortality around heart disease and stroke, and people are more likely to seek mental health treatment, report lower depression and financial stress scores.

“Across a number of health outcomes, we see that health insurance … actually does improve health outcomes,” Nguyen. “You see people seek all the preventative care … to prevent chronic diseases, to get their vaccines and so forth.”

Critical care access

The present challenge that Butte County and other rural communities face are the risk of hospitals closing. In 2025, Glenn Medical Center’s emergency department closed and Oroville Hospital filed for bankruptcy.

Nguyen said that communities and states that expanded coverage saw hospitals with greater solvency and financial stability, “which we’re seeing more and more is an issue in rural areas of that state.”

The panel discussed a range of solutions to address insufficient rural health care, including expansion to telehealth, addressing hospital closures, helping new patients with navigators and expanding local workforce development.

Beaudoin said that Butte County has recently been bringing in medical students with the Healthy Rural California’s family medical and psychiatry residency program.

“It’s hard what Butte County has done, going out into the community and recruited individual practices,” Beaudoin said. “Not to mention bringing in medical students; once you get people up to Chico, they see how good it is … there’s trees, snow on the mountain … let them hang out downtown a little while; they’ll be set.”

Vaccines

With recent nationwide measles outbreak being reported, Beaudoin said vaccine rates in Butte County “luckily hit around 94, 95% vaccine rates. But unfortunately, what we see is there are these pockets of people, for whatever reason, just don’t trust the vaccines.”

In 2025, the state passed Assembly Bill 144 protecting vaccine coverage from insurance providers that may not cover certain vaccines as preventative care.

On Monday, a federal judge blocked an order by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that ended broad recommendations for childhood vaccinations.

Beaudoin said to this newspaper he thinks childhood vaccination rates didn’t change much since the DHHS order, and that nearly every school in Butte County is hitting about 95% vaccination rates.

He recommends that people get now three regular vaccines to help prevent outbreaks in the county; including the regular flu shot which he said was important to prevent deaths.

“We saw four deaths, one week for the flu and being counted this year,” he said. “We’re still seeing COVID hospitalizations … and then there’s RSV.

“In the past five years, it feels like we’re now at three respiratory vaccines. But in reality, its hard for us in public health to say that it’s not recommended because what we see is people going in the hospital for RSV; we see kids … we see people over 65, and we have these prevention tactics; we give vaccines to people.”

© 2026 Chico Enterprise-Record, Calif. Visit www.chicoer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.