The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing that, beginning today, as many as 720,000 pregnant and postpartum people across the United States could be guaranteed Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage for a full 12 months after pregnancy thanks to the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Medicaid covers 42 percent of all births in the nation, and this new option for states to extend Medicaid and CHIP coverage marks the Biden-Harris Administration’s latest effort to address the nation’s crisis in pregnancy-related deaths and maternal morbidity by opening the door to postpartum care for hundreds of thousands of people.
New Mexico would raise a state health-insurance tax and dedicate the new revenue to programs intended to make health care more affordable under a proposal that passed the state House on Sunday.
Rep. Deborah Armstrong, D-Albuquerque, described the legislation as an unusual opportunity to generate more revenue for health care without increasing the total amount consumers now pay.
The increased state tax would partially replace a federal tax that’s being repealed, she said, meaning health insurance carriers would actually be charged less in taxes than they are now, even after the state increase.
The legislation, House Bill 278, would raise about $125 million in annual revenue when fully phased in — the bulk of it dedicated to a new fund for health care affordability, according to legislative analysts.
Former President Barack Obama will return to the White House on Tuesday for the first time since he left office to promote the Affordable Care Act in an event alongside President Joe Biden, a White House official said.
...Vice President Kamala Harris will join them in delivering remarks about the expansion of health care benefits under the law, as well as Biden’s efforts to further reduce health care costs and expand access to care, the official added.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and other members of the Cabinet, which includes a number of people who served in the Obama administration, are also expected to attend.
I've been posting weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses nearly a year ago, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but in recent months I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on.
Way back in March 2020, I launched my own COVID-19 case/fatality tracking spreadsheet project which mostly duplicates any number of existing sites, including one important addition:
I've added the Presidential partisan lean of each state as well as which party holds the governor's seat. This may seem incredibly inappropriate (and it is), but it's sadly necessary because Donald Trump has apparently decided to only grant his favor and any substantial assistance to states which a) voted for him and b) whose governors kiss his ass enough.
I took a lot of criticism at the time from people who got the vapors and claimed that I was the one "politicizing" the pandemic, which was laughable in the Trump era, where everything has been politicized by the Trump Administration.
Since the collapse of the Build Back Better Act in the U.S. Senate last December (reminder: It passed the House but came to a screeching halt when all 50 Republican Senators along with conservative Democrat Joe Manchin refused to support it), Congressional Democrats have been quietly trying to put at least some of the pieces of the bill back together in an attempt to salvage something out of President Biden's signature social spending agenda.
Personally, I'm most focused on making the enhanced/expanded ACA subsidies under the American Rescue Plan (ARP) permanent, of course, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would cost roughly $220 billion over 10 years to implement. If the ARP subsidies are allowed to expire (which would revert the ACA back to the original subsidy formula, including bringing back the hated "Subsidy Cliff"), over 13 million Americans would find their health insurance premiums jump by an average of over $700/year apiece, with some households seeing theirs skyrocket by as much as $17,000/year (that's not a typo).
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the 2021-2030 National Health Expenditure (NHE) report, prepared by the CMS Office of the Actuary, that presents health spending and enrollment projections for the coming decade. The report notably shows that despite the increased demand for patient care in 2021, the growth in national health spending is estimated to have slowed to 4.2%, from 9.7% in 2020, as supplemental funding for public health activity and other federal programs, specifically those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, declined significantly.
NOTE: Given how much the national pace of vaccination shots has slowed down recently (the 7-day average is down to around ~330,000/day), this is now a MONTHLY update unless the pace picks up again significantly.
Methodology reminders:
I go by county residents who have received the 2nd COVID-19 shot only (or 1st in the case of the J&J vaccine).
I base my percentages on the total population via the 2020 U.S. Census as opposed to adults only or those over 11 years old (or even over 4 years old).
For most states + DC I use the daily data from the Centers for Disease Control, but there are some where the CDC is either missing county-level data entirely or where the CDC data is less than 90% complete at the county level. Therefore:
As you might expect, there's a clear drop-off in new COVID cases per capita as the vaccination rate of the counties goes up. There seems to bea slight drop-off starting around 50% fully vaccinated, followed by a steep drop-off starting around 65% vaxxed.
There's a third drop-off at around 75%, but there's literally only a handful of counties which have achieved that high a vaccination rate so far anyway.
HOWEVER, there's one major outlier over the 65% threshold...Miami-Dade County.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Miami-Dade has fully vaccinated 68% of their entire population (1.84 million out of 2.72 million residents). I use the slightly lower official 2020 U.S. Census popualtion count for Miami-Dade County (2,701,767), which makes the vaccination rate slightly higher still: 68.24%.
For months I've posted weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but more recently I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on. As it happens, this didn't change things that much since June 2021 in particular was the nadir of the pandemic's death rate since it began.
