Over at Bloomberg News, Aziza Kasumov has written up what is, for the most part, an excellent profile of a middle-class family who crystalize the single biggest real flaw in the design of the Affordable Care Act (as opposed to the bullshit ones made up by opponents over the years): Those enrolled in individual market policies who earn more than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (around $48,000/year for an individual, or $98,000 for a family of four):
David and Maribel Maldonado seem the very definition of making it in America. David arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a small child...His wife Maribel, whose family is also from Mexico, worked as a hairstylist while caring for the couple’s two children. David’s annual salary reached about $113,000 by the time the children were in their teens. It was more than enough to live in a pretty suburban house outside Dallas, take family vacations, go to restaurants and splurge at the nearby mall. And to afford health insurance.
The bold-faced bit above has some relevance later in the story.
With the 2018 Midterm Elections mostly out of the way (there's still at least 7 statewide races which haven't been called yet in Georgia, Florida and Arizona which are currently in the process of various counts, recounts and/or run-off elections), the Democratic Party has indeed retaken the U.S. House of Reprentatives by a solid margin, adding anywhere from 33 - 40 House seats when they only needed a net gain of 23 to take control. Starting in January, the House Democrats will be able to vote on and pass pretty much whatever bills they want, presumably under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Last year, the Washington Health Benefit Exchange reported enrolling roughly 4,500 new ACA exchange enrollees in the first 8 days, which was a whopping 53% increase over 2017. This was in addition to what I estimated was roughly 13,000 current enrollees actively renewing their existing policies or switching to a different one, for a total of perhaps 17,500 QHP selections.
Despite changes to the Affordable Care Act during the past couple of years, local health-insurance officials are optimistic that the state’s health-insurance exchange will flourish in 2019.
Since enrollment for 2019 began Nov. 1, about 190,000 people have signed up for health insurance through the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, which is about 5 percent more than the same period last year.
Collaborations with Lyft, Uber, Independent Drivers Guild Reach Drivers Across NYS
ALBANY, NY (November 9, 2018) – NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace, today announced it is partnering again during the Open Enrollment Period with ridesharing companies Lyft and Uber, and with the Independent Drivers Guild. Through the partnership, tens of thousands of drivers throughout New York State will be urged to visit the Marketplace to shop for and enroll in quality, affordable health insurance. Open Enrollment for 2019 coverage began November 1. Consumers must enroll by December 15, 2018 for coverage beginning January 1, 2019.
MNsure Update on First Week of Open Enrollment
November 8, 2018
ST. PAUL, Minn.—MNsure CEO, Nate Clark, issued the following statement recapping the first full week of open enrollment:
“This year’s open enrollment continues to go smoothly with consistently low wait times throughout the first week. With lower rates across the state, we have seen a steady stream of Minnesotans signing up for health coverage. We encourage Minnesotans to visit MNsure.org to see if they are eligible for exclusive tax credits that could lower their monthly premiums.”
This year to date, MNsure has renewed more people into coverage than ever before.Open enrollment figures will be released next Wednesday (11/14) at MNsure’s public board meeting at 1 p.m.
HealthSherpa is a California-based technology company focused on connecting individuals with health coverage. The site was initially developed as an alternative to research plans from Healthcare.gov, and now provides individual health, dental and vision benefits to both part-time employees and retirees. As of February 2017, over 800,000 people have been enrolled in individual health coverage through HealthSherpa.
First, I want to clarify that I'm not shilling for HealthSherpa here. They aren't paying me for this post. I have no idea whether their customer service is awesome or sucks or anything like that.
In U.S. politics, the Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape. Legislation, including the Hyde Amendment, generally restricts the use of funds allocated for the Department of Health and Human Services and consequently has significant effects involving Medicaid recipients. Medicaid currently serves approximately 6.5 million women in the United States, including 1 in 5 women of reproductive age (women aged 15–44).
Under Georgia law, if no candidate ends up with more than 50% of the total vote, the top two candidates move on to a run-off election, so if Kemp's lead ends up dropping by around 13,000 more votes as the thousands of remaining ballots are counted, it's on to a run-off between the two.
Covered California, the largest state-based ACA exchange for the largest state in the country, actually launched their 2019 ACA Open Enrollment Period over three weeks ago, on October 15th.
They still haven't posted any 2019 enrollment numbers, which I find rather irritating, but they did just send out the following press release regarding a promotional bus tour they're doing which highlights a couple of interesting data points:
Covered California Launches Iconic Bus Tour to Promote Enrollment and Show How “Life Can Change in an Instant”
As I noted a few days ago, now that the 2019 ACA Open Enrollment Period is actually underway and the approved individual market premium rate changes have been posted publicly for every state, I'm finally able to go back and wrap up my 2019 Rate Hike Project for the nine states which I was still missing final numbers for.
As I further noted, the approved rates in most of those states didn't change much compared to the preliminary/requested rate changes I had already analyzed earlier this year:
