Charles Gaba's blog

via MNsure, Minnesota's ACA exchange:

More than 9,400 Minnesotans Enrolled in Private Health Insurance Coverage During MNsure's COVID-19 Emergency Special Enrollment Period

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Last month, Governor Walz announced a 30-day emergency special enrollment period (SEP) for individuals who were uninsured in the wake of COVID-19. During that time, 9,482 Minnesotans enrolled in private health insurance plans through MNsure. The SEP ran from March 23 through April 21. Additionally, more than 13,700 applied for public health insurance programs during that time period.

Every Minnesotan deserves access to the health care they need—especially during the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Governor Tim Walz. “I am happy that we were able to offer the special enrollment period so more than 23,000 uninsured Minnesotans were able to enroll in health coverage. Minnesotans without coverage should keep coming to MNsure to see if they are eligible for other special enrollments or publicly funded health care programs with year-round enrollment like Medical Assistance or MinnesotaCare.”

via Connect for Health Colorado:

10,000 Coloradans Covered during Emergency Special Enrollment Period So Far; Marketplace Open to Those with Life Changes

More than 10,000 Coloradans so far have signed up for a health insurance plan through Connect for Health Colorado’s emergency Special Enrollment period, which ends Thursday, April 30, 2020. The Marketplace opened the Special Enrollment period on March 20 in response to the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Uninsured residents have nine days left to enroll for coverage that begins on May 1. 

“We created this enrollment opportunity to relieve some stress for thousands of families who are trying to figure out their health coverage needs during this time.” said Chief Executive Officer Kevin Patterson. “I encourage residents who are uninsured to sign up before the April 30 deadline.”  

Since tracking and analyzing data is what I'm best known for...and since I'm mostly stuck sitting in front of the computer all day whether I like it or not these days anyway...I've started my own daily COVID-19 spreadsheet.

Again, I'm not the one who compiled the data itself--many other teams with far better resources than I have are doing that--but I'm pulling their work together and adding some additional context, such as per capita info by state/territory.

Nationally:

  • 4.16 million tests have been completed in the U.S.
  • 27,000 more Americans tested positive today. 820,000 have tested positive to date (2.5 per thousand)
  • Another 2,800 Americans died today. Over 45,300 have died to date (1.4 per thousand).
  • The U.S. Case Fatality Rate (CFR) now stands at 5.5%.
  • The U.S. case count has increased 33% over the past week, and the total U.S. death toll has increased by 52%.

New York:

For over a month now, I (and many, many others) have been pleading with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, CMS Administrator Seema Verma and CMS itself to launch a formal, "open" COVID-19 specific Special Enrollment Period for the millions of people living in the 38 states hosted by HealthCare.Gov who are uninsured but who don't qualify for Medicaid, CHIP or other "year-round enrollment" programs such as the Essential Plan in New York, MinnesotaCare in Minnesota or ConnectorCare in Massachusetts. Even the insurance industry--which normally hates letting people enroll at any time outside of the official Open Enrollment Period--has been calling for them to do so.

Since tracking and analyzing data is what I'm best known for...and since I'm mostly stuck sitting in front of the computer all day whether I like it or not these days anyway...I've started my own daily COVID-19 spreadsheet.

Again, I'm not the one who compiled the data itself--many other teams with far better resources than I have are doing that--but I'm pulling their work together and adding some additional context, such as per capita info by state/territory.

Nationally:

Since tracking and analyzing data is what I'm best known for...and since I'm mostly stuck sitting in front of the computer all day whether I like it or not these days anyway...I've started my own daily COVID-19 spreadsheet.

Again, I'm not the one who compiled the data itself--many other teams with far better resources than I have are doing that--but I'm pulling their work together and adding some additional context, such as per capita info by state/territory.

Nationally:

  • 3.87 million Americans have been tested for COVID-19 to date (1.2% of the population)
  • 25,500 more Americans tested positive today.
  • 764,000 have tested positive to date (2.3 per thousand)
  • Another 1,500 Americans died today. Over 40,500 have died to date.
  • The apparent U.S mortality rate is up to 5.3% (0.12 per thousand).

New York:

Since tracking and analyzing data is what I'm best known for...and since I'm mostly stuck sitting in front of the computer all day whether I like it or not these days anyway...I've started my own daily COVID-19 spreadsheet.

Again, I'm not the one who compiled the data itself--many other teams with far better resources than I have are doing that--but I'm pulling their work together and adding some additional context, such as per capita info by state/territory.

I also include the partisan lean of every state, which may sound cynical or tasteless...unless you've been paying attention to the news of late. That's exactly how Donald Trump sees it; he's literally giving red states whatever resources they ask for (or more) while deliberately starving the blue states (or even some purple states if their governors aren't "nice" enough to him) or giving them scraps.

Nationally:

Last summer, as part of my ambitious Medical Loss Ratio project, I not only broke out the exact dollar amounts and number of enrollees receiving rebates for every insurance carrier in every state in the country before the data was made publicly available, but I even took a crack at projecting just how much I expected individual market MLR rebates to be for every state in 2020 as well.

Historically, the ACA's MLR provision paid out between $100 - $400 million per year from 2012 - 2018 in rebates to individual market enrollees, averaging around $186 million per year...until last year. Here's what I originally projected 2019 payments (paid out in 2020) would likely look like last August:

If you use Anderson's 7% and assume the final, national weighted average for 2020 comes in at around 0.5%, that means roughly 6.5% of that $93.2 billion could end up having to be rebated to enrollees....or potentially 1/3 of up to $6 billion.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, normally I would've been all over the official CMS 2020 Open Enrollment Period report the moment it was released. It cuts to the core of what I've done here at ACA Signups for the past seven years: Detailed demographic breakouts of everyone who enrolled in on-exchange ACA market policies during the Open Enrollment Period.

Instead, this year I've kind of put it to the side for obvious reasons. With the COVID-19 pandemic having killed over 37,000 Americans and with well over 710,000 total cases to date, it's hard to get too focused on this particular report. Besides, as I noted before, the national enrollment numbers (overall) are almost identical to last year anyway: Just 35,000 fewer people than during the 2019 OEP.

Since tracking and analyzing data is what I'm best known for...and since I'm mostly stuck sitting in front of the computer all day whether I like it or not these days anyway...I've started my own daily COVID-19 spreadsheet.

Again, I'm not the one who compiled the data itself--many other teams with far better resources than I have are doing that--but I'm pulling their work together and adding some additional context, such as per capita info by state/territory.

I also include the partisan lean of every state, which may sound cynical or tasteless...unless you've been paying attention to the news of late. That's exactly how Donald Trump sees it; he's literally giving red states whatever resources they ask for (or more) while deliberately starving the blue states (or even some purple states if their governors aren't "nice" enough to him) or giving them scraps.

Nationally:

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