(sigh) Naming-wise, this is actually worse than the title of last year's ACA upgrade bill ("The Undo Sabotage and Expand Affordability of Health Insurance Act", or #USEAHIA), H.R.5155, which I didn't think was possible.
In any event, last year I went with simply calling it "ACA 2.0", which seems even more appropriate today. Others seem to agree:
The bill Democrats are rolling out to shore up Obamacare is called the Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Healthcare More Affordable Act. I think @charles_gaba calling it ACA 2.0 is going to catch on pretty quickly.
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today released the Health Insurance Exchanges 2019 Open Enrollment Report. With the Trump Administration’s focus on making healthcare more affordable, the report confirms another successful open enrollment period coinciding with a stabilization of premiums after years of substantial increases. Specifically, the report shows plan selections in Exchange plans in the 50 states and D.C. remained steady at 11.4 million. This represents a minimal decline of around 300,000 plan selections from the same time last year. Also, as outlined in the report, average total premiums for plans selected through HealthCare.gov dropped by 1.5 percent from the prior year, the first decline since the Exchanges began operations in 2014.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that Colorado is joining over a half-dozen other states in moving forward with their own ACA reinsurance program 1332 waiver request. At the time, I was a bit vague as to just how much the program, if approved, would actually lower unsubsidized premiums, especially since the wording of the bill differentiates between different rating areas:
The Commissioner shall set the payment parameters at amounts to achieve:
NOTE: This was originally posted just before H.R. 1868 was introduced, and was based on a prior version of the legislation from 2018 called H.R.5155. Everything below has been updated to reflect the 2019 version of the legislation in question.
On Saturday, the 9th Anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act being signed into law, the news broke that on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders will be formally rolling out some sort of major "ACA 2.0" legislation:
Pelosi, House Democrats to Unveil Sweeping Legislation to Protect People with Pre-Existing Conditions and Lower Health Costs
UPDATE 3/26/19:I'm watching the actual press conference right now. I just wanted to note that there will likely be a few changes/tweaks in the bill/bills introduced today vs. last year's H.R.5155, but it sounds like it'll be about 95% the same. More details this evening.
Back in early January, in an MSNBC interview with Joy Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted that she did indeed intend on moving on legislation to, at the very least, raise or remove the ACA subsidy income threshold to allow financial assistance to be available to more people:
The new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives said this weekend she wants changes in the income threshold to allow more Americans to gain subsidies so they can buy individual coverage known as Obamacare. Helping more people get subsides are among the "couple of things" she would like to do to improve the ACA and expand health coverage to more Americans, Pelosi, a California Democrat, told MSNBC Friday night.
This one came completely out of left field, but it's a pleasant surprise.
Last year, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, along with the Democratically-controlled state legislature, passed several sweeping laws and policies designed to either protect the ACA from sabogate efforts by the Trump Administration or to cancel out existing sabotage measures.
Establishing a robust reinsurance program to lower insurance premiums,
Reinstating the ACA's individual mandate penalty,
Canceling out Trump's expansion of Association Health Plans (Short-Term plans were already banned), and
Protecting enrollees from out-of-network "surprise plans" (this one didn't really have anything to do with the ACA itself, but is an important issue regardless)
In addition, Murphy issued an executive order directing state agencies to help protect/promote the ACA including:
Provide a 20 Percent Health Insurance Premium Subsidy
The Governor will take immediate action by creating a subsidy program to reduce by 20 percent the monthly premiums for Minnesotans who receive their insurance through MNSure. This subsidy will be applied directly against a consumer’s premiums. This proposal provides relief to Minnesotans with incomes over 400 percent of the federal poverty level do not qualify for the federal premium tax credit which helps lower the costs of health insurance premiums. Up to 80,000 people could participate in the program, reducing the out-of-pocket costs of their health insurance premiums.
Kansas House fails to override Brownback Medicaid expansion veto
The effort to expand Medicaid in Kansas fell apart Monday as the House failed to override Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto of a bill that would have expanded the health care program to thousands of low-income people in the state.
The 81-44 vote, three shy of the 84 needed to overcome the governor’s opposition, effectively ends the Medicaid expansion push in Kansas after it successfully passed both chambers with bipartisan support earlier this year.
That was then. This is now. Kansas now has a Democratic governor who supports Medicaid expansion, and yesterday this happened (via Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service):
CMS gives thumbs-up to Medicaid work requirements in Ohio
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has approved a waiver request for work requirements in Ohio’s Medicaid program.
...CMS rolled out guidance on these waivers in January 2018, and since then eight states, including Ohio, have had requests approved. Several additional states have submitted waivers that the agency has yet to weigh in on.
...Arkansas is the only state where such work requirements have formally been launched, and in the last several months of 2018, more than 18,000 people lost Medicaid coverage as a result of the work requirement. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that most of these losses were a result of the administrative requirements associated with reporting work hours.
