Well, for good or for bad, it's finally here: The stripped-down-but-bipartisan COVID19 relief bill.
You can read the whole thing here...if you have a LOT of spare time on your hands. It's 5,600 pages long, 1.1 million words. For context, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is only half that length (576,000 words).
There's 1,000 explainers being written today about the most obvious stuff (the $600 direct relief checks, the extended & enhanced unemployment funding, etc etc), most of which falls far short of what's actually needed. Instead, I'm focusing on the ACA-related provisions. I already wrote about the surprise billing prohibition this morning, of course, but a quick initial scan of the text (which isn't easy...again, 5,600 pages...) reveals several other items directly related to the Affordable Care Act, so let's take a look! (Note: I'm sure I'm missing a few):
Over six months after House Democrats passed a robust COVID-19 relief bill (only to see it continuously blocked by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), it looks like Congress is finally set to compromise on a vastly stripped-down bipartisan bill which would provide at least a small amount of relief for hundreds of millions of American families and businesses.
While the bill is underwhelming (to put it mildly) overall, it does include several important provisions, one of which is a long-sought solution to a massive healthcare problem which existed long before COVID came knocking at our door nearly a year ago: Surprise Billing.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which comes from the GitHub data of the New York Times due to JHU not breaking the state out by county but by "region" for some reason.
I've made some more changes:
I've now completed updating the partisan lean for every county except Alaska (I'm having trouble getting that broken out by "County-Equivalent Region") to the 2020 Biden/Trump results. Alaska still uses the Clinton/Trump 2016 results, although I can't imagine more than one or two regions changed status there this year.
I've also added columns listing the actual Biden/Trump vote percentage for each county to give a feel for how partisan it is. Again, I'm defining "Swing District" as any county where the difference is less than 6.0%. There's 188 swing districts (out of over 3,100 total), with around 33.8 million Americans out of 332 million total, or roughly 10.2% of the U.S. population.
I've also added all U.S. territories, including a county-equivalent breakout for Puerto Rico, as well as American Samoa, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. None of these vote in the general Presidential election, of course, but I'm still tracking their COVID-19 case & death rates. None show up in the top 100 of either ranking, however. Note that Puerto Rico only includes the case breakout, not deaths, which are unavailable for some reason.
Finally, I corrected a significant error on my part in the Blue/Red County Ratio graph (see below)
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Friday, December 18th (click image for high-res version).
Blue = Joe Biden won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trumpwon by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
From the state totals one obvious pattern leaps out: enrollment is up 9.7% in states that have not enacted the ACA Medicaid expansion -- and down 0.5% in states that have expanded the expansion (including Nebraska, which opened the Medicaid expansion doors in October of this year).
Access Health CT, Connecticut's state-based ACA exchange, has updated their enrollment summary and now reports 102,049 residents have selected policies for 2021, including 15,310 new enrollees.
Last year they had a total of 107,833 QHP selections during Open Enrollment, which they're just 5.4% away from breaking.
In addition, as noted a few days ago, they're also extending their deadline by a full month (whcih they also did last year):
I was doing this earlier in the summer but stopped updating it in August; I've started over with a fresh spreadsheet and have expanded it to include every U.S. territory, including not just DC & Puerto Rico but also American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and even the Northern Mariana Islands.
I've done my best to label every state/territory, which obviously isn't easy to do for most of them given how tangled it gets in the middle. The most obvious point is that New York and New Jersey, which towered over every other state last spring, are now utterly dwarfed by North & South Dakota, which are skyrocketing.
North and South Dakota are the first two states where more than 10% of the entire population has tested positive (in fact, North Dakota is about to hit 12%. Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Utah could all potentially hit the 10% milestone by New Year's Eve as well.
Way back in October 2013, I launched the ACA Signups project as a light, nerdy hobby thing which was only supposed to last around six months, through the end of the first ACA Open Enrollment Period (March 31, 2014). Instead...well, let's just say that it's more than seven years later and I'm still doing this.
The reality is that The Graph itself doesn't serve a whole lot of useful function anymore. The enrollment patterns were erratic the first couple of years but have since settled into a pretty predictable...if not downright boring pattern for both the federal and state exchanges. The main reason I keep doing it each year is mostly out of tradition these days; after all, without The Graph, there wouldn't be an ACA Signups and I wouldn't have become a healthcare policy wonk in the first place.
In Week Six of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 4,416,057 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform or were automatically re-enrolled in a plan. While past snapshots this year have measured enrollment weeks Sunday through Saturday, this week’s snapshot for week six also includes the final few days of the Open Enrollment Period.
Deadline to Get Health Insurance Extended Idahoans have until December 31 to get covered for 2021
Today, for the first time ever, the Your Health Idaho Board of Directors voted to extend the Open Enrolment deadline. Idahoans now have until Dec. 31, 2020, to sign up for health insurance coverage that begins Jan. 1, 2021.
Your Health Idaho saw the largest single-day enrollment since 2018 on Tuesday, Dec. 15, the original deadline date. This increased activity coupled with ongoing impacts from the coronavirus pandemic spurred Your Health Idaho to extend the deadline.
“An unprecedented year calls for unprecedented measures,” said Your Health Idaho Chairman of the Board, Stephen Weeg. “Given the challenges faced by Idahoans in 2020 and the renewed need for comprehensive health insurance, we hope that by extending the deadline a few more weeks, every Idahoan will have access to the coverage they need for the coming year.”
Earlier this week California bumped out their "soft" enrollment deadline for January coverage from 12/15 to 12/30. Yesterday Colorado bumped theirs out to 12/18, and Connecticut tacked on an entire extra month to their Open Enrollment Period (though enrollees there won't start coverage until February at this point).
Press Release: NY State of Health Reminds New Yorkers There is Still Time to Sign up for Coverage that Begins on January 1, 2021
Dec 17, 2020
(ALBANY, N.Y) December 17, 2020-- NY State of Health, New York’s official health plan Marketplace today announced New Yorkers applying for Qualified Health Plan coverage have until December 31 to sign up for health coverage starting January 1, 2021. Individuals who were unable to enroll by the December 15 deadline should enroll now by visiting the NY State of Health website.
