Latino Healthcare Enrollment Up in California for January, Still Down Overall

January figures represent an increase in Hispanic healthcare enrollment for Covered California, but Latino numbers are still lagging in the Golden State.

According to KPCC, approximately 100,000 people signed up for healthcare in the first two weeks of February, keeping pace with the numbers reported in the last two weeks of January.

On the Hispanic side of the equation, January saw Latino enrollment jump to 28 percent. From October through December, the Latino enrollment rate had been at around 18 percent, according to Peter V. Lee, executive director of Covered California.

To date, more than 1.6 million Californians have found some kind of coverage, either through Covered California, private insurance providers or through Medi-Cal.

Lee reports that Covered California is still planning a major push to get Hispanics to register with the exchange.

"We will be spending $8.2 million dollars in Spanish language media in the first quarter of this year," Lee told KPCC. "That's a 73 percent increase over what we spent in the final quarter of 2013."

While January figures are encouraging, Latino participation is still low compared to whites.

"Some of these families have never had insurance in their lives," said the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California Executive Director Xavier Morales to CNN Money, which reports that only 19 percent of Latinos have looked for health insurance on the exchanges, compared to 28 percent of whites.

Less than 20 percent of the applicants in California identify themselves as Hispanic, despite the fact that estimates show 46 percent of Californians eligible for subsidies are Latino.

A wide variety of factors have been suggested for the shortfall in Hispanic enrollment, among them are a lack of awareness of availability and the fact that in many Latino households there are undocumented family members, raising fears of possible deportations if discovered through the enrollment process.