The list includes 9 major items (some of which actually include a lot more than one provision within them). It really should include ten, since I forgot about implementing a Basic Health Plan program like New York and Minnesota have (and as Oregon is ramping up to do soon as well), but it's still a pretty full plate.
I managed movie theaters for most of the '90's, and was in charge of the concession stand & its staff. One year I came back from vacation to find the employees cleaning the concession stand after a big rush of customers.
I was happy to see this until I realized that some of the staff were using a mop with bleach-based cleanser to clean the floor at the same time other staffers were using an ammonia-based cleanser to clean the glass popcorn bins right next to the employee mopping.
I freaked out a bit, ordering them to stop immediately and turning on a fan to blow the fumes in opposite directions. Apparently neither the employees nor the other manager who had been covering my department while I was on vacation had ever learned that mixing bleach and ammonia can be fatal.
When I asked about it, the other manager apologized but explained that they were simply trying to follow both state and local health/safety board rules. You see, some of the staff were college students while others were minor high school students.
Yesterday the U.S. Census Bureau published new reports on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States as of 2022. Obviously all three of these are extremely important and interact closely with each other, but given that my focus is healthcare policy, I'm going to stick with the health insurance coverage portion.
According to the 2023 Current Population Survey Annual Social & Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC):
...92.1% of the U.S. population had health insurance coverage for all or part of 2022 (compared to 91.7% in 2021). An estimated 25.9 million or 7.9% of people did not have health insurance at any point during 2022, according to the 2023 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). That compares to 27.2 million or 8.3% of people who did not have health insurance at any point during 2021.
Last Tuesday I noted that a package of bills designed to codify various ACA protections into state law here in Michigan (most of which are low-hanging fruit of my own healthcare wish list which I posted back in February) had managed to make it halfway through the legislative process: Five of them have passed the Michigan House, but not the Senate; the other three have passed the Michigan Senate...but not the House. I applauded the state legislature for pushing these bills halfway through and encouraged them to get the other half of the job done.
Since 2013, Navigators have helped Americans understand their health insurance options and facilitated their enrollment in health insurance coverage through the Federally-facilitated Marketplace (FFM). As trusted community partners, their mission focuses on assisting the uninsured and other underserved communities. Navigators serve an important role in connecting communities to health coverage, including communities that historically have experienced lower access to health coverage and greater disparities in health outcomes. Entities and individuals cannot serve as Navigators without receiving federal cooperative agreement funding, authorized in the Affordable Care Act, to perform Navigator duties.
While nearly 16.4 million Americans selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) via the federal and state ACA exchanges/marketplaces during the official 2023 Open Enrollment Period (along with an additional 1.2 million signing up for a Basic Health Plan (BHP) program in New York & Minnesota, which CMS continues to inexplicably treat as an afterthought in such reports), not all of them actually pay their first monthly premium (for January) for various reasons:
For this, I'm assuming a similar 94% average effectuation rate as of February 1st (2 days from now) to the ASPE report from last year for QHP enrollees. Taken literally, that would mean 15,328,061 effectuated on-exchange ACA enrollees.
This is, of course, extremely important since household income is one of the most critical factors in calculating how much financial assistance enrollees receive, as well as whether or not they're eligible for Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTC).
If you've ever wondered why healthcare wonks (myself included) almost never even bring up the ACA's Catastrophic Level plans and why the only time I ever discuss Platinum Plans is in the context of high-CSR enrollees being eligible for "Secret Platinum" plans (labeled as Silver), this table should explain why.
Next up: Age brackets, gender, racial/ethnic groups and urban/rural communities. I'm also throwing in the stand-alone Dental Plan table for the heck of it since I don't know where else to include it.
I don't have a ton to say about any of these, really. It's always interesting to me to see that nearly 2% of ACA exchange enrollees are 65 or older. Not sure why they aren't on Medicare but I'm sure there are logical reasons.
