The following comes from a Dec. 5 story in the Desert Sun.

More than 40 people showed up Thursday to sign up for health insurance as desert health care leaders launched a new program designed to enroll as many of the Coachella Valley’s roughly 90,000 uninsured residents in the Affordable Care Act as possible.

The new outreach efforts include a $1.2 million partnership between the Desert Healthcare District and the California Endowment and a newly launched Path to Health from Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio….

“There’s a lot of pent-up need,” said Kathy Greco, CEO of Desert Healthcare District.

The hugely controversial — and little-understood — federal reform has a large, vocal group of detractors who have tried to derail it from the start and point to recent failures in the federal exchange’s website, as well as the cancellation of individual insurance policies under the ACA, as evidences of its failure.

But California has pushed ahead and opted all-in to its key tenets, choosing not to comply with a delay in policy cancellation and working actively to enroll residents through outreach events, advertising and a recently launched “Give the Gift of Health” holiday campaign….

In the valley, the Desert Healthcare District and Endowment have funded 25 health navigators through six different community agencies — Borrego Community Health Foundation, Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo, Hope to Health, Planned Parenthood, Catholic Charities and FIND Food Bank. All of the positions have now been filled and, following final training for some, will head into the community soon to begin their work….

To read the original story, click here.