Enrollment by Latinos in California's healthcare insurance exchange surged in the final month of sign-ups after an intensive push to reach that key population. "Our enrollment became more diverse in this last month, particularly among California's Latino population; our enrollment became younger," Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said during a conference call with reporters Thursday after testifying with the heads of other state exchanges on Capitol Hill.

Maria Mejia grew up in an abusive household, so at the age of 13 she ran away from home and joined a gang in search of a sense of family. Soon after, she began dating the leader of the gang, a drug user, who infected her with HIV. Mejia estimates she was infected between 1988 or 1989, when she was about 15 or 16 years old. She says she was diagnosed by sheer coincidence. Tired of the gang life, she decided to move back home and then joined the Job Corps in Kentucky, which required routine medical tests. A week before her 18th birthday, a doctor incorrectly informed that she had AIDS when she was, in fact, HIV-positive.

SACRAMENTO -- A proposal to have the state fund an expansion of healthcare to cover low-income residents in the country illegally was advanced Wednesday by the state Senate Health Committee.

The Affordable Care Act is generally a win for people living with HIV and AIDS, about 30 percent of whom are uninsured. It offers new health insurance options — both private and public — to a group that had been largely locked out of the individual insurance market because of rules about preexisting conditions. In 2010, just 17 percent of people with HIV and AIDS had private insurance, compared to 65 percent of the general U.S. population. Many others are low-income and childless, making them ineligible for Medicaid in most states.