Health Insurance Town Halls Offered to Michigan Consumers with Questions about Open Enrollment
Thousands of Michiganders have lost health coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) is offering virtual town hall events to help answer questions about open enrollment on the Health Insurance Marketplace, which runs until Dec. 15.
These live online town hall meetings are part of a series of events that will help consumers learn and ask questions about signing up for a health plan on the Health Insurance Marketplace. To attend a virtual town hall event, click the event link at its start time. Instructions for attendees are available and explain how to join an event and ask questions.
The Massachusetts Health Connector (MA's ACA exchange) doesn't generally post official enrollment data reports via press releases, but I have a contact there who sends me their latest numbers from time to time during Open Enrollment:
Here's where we are at, currently:
January effectuations: 275,003
Feb. and March effectuations: 5
Plan Selections: 9,143
Total enrollments: 284,151
As a reminder, "effectuations" have paid the first month premium and are good to go. Plan selections still need payment to start.
Massachusetts is a bit unique among the ACA exchanges--they, along with Rhode Island, are the only ones which handle premium payments as well as policy enrollments. This means that they don't just track how many people select policies, they also know how many of those who enroll have actually paid their monthly premiums.
Access Health CT, Connecticut's ACA exchange, is posting updates to their Open Enrollment Period (OEP) numbers every Friday. Last week they reported 100,094 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) selections during the first 20 days of the 2021 OEP, which sounds more impressive than it is, since 95,857 of those were current enrollees having their auto-renewals front-loaded; only 4,237 of them were actually new enrollees. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
This week, they report that they have 100,345 total QHP selections, of which 5,632 are new. On the surface this sounds off...shouldn't it be 101,489 total? I'm pretty sure the reason for the discrepancy is that not every current enrollee actually renews/re-enrolls for the following year. The exchange plugs them in as renewing, but they can still go in and actively cancel their renewal, which reduces the total a bit. In this case, it sounds like 1,144 current enrollees have done so over the past week. This gives a net increase of 251 over the past week, or 36 per day.
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 Dakota recently became the first state to cross the 10% infection threshold, with South Dakota not far behind. Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Utah could all potentially hit the 10% milestone by New Year's Eve as well.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which come 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 important changes starting this week:
First: Until now, I've been using the 2016 Trump/Clinton election results for partisan lean for each county. Now that the dust has (mostly) settled on the 2020 election, I've updated this to the Biden/Trump results for 2020. There's a few states where I don't have county-level data for 2020 yet (AK, CT, MA, NH, NY, RI & VT). In most of these states it's only broken out by city- or legislative district-level so far; in New York, they still haven't reported a large chunk of the vote itself yet. For those 7 states I still have them categorized by the 2016 results, but will update these with 2020 status in the future.
Second: 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 35 million Americans out of 331 million total, or roughly 10.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, November 28th (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
UPDATE: It looks like the 2022 NBPP will be open for Public Commentstarting on December 4th and ending on December 30th at 5pm. This is obviously 4 days shorter than the typical 30-day minimum, and it includes Christmas Eve & Christmas Day as well. I've been informed that this is technically legal as allowing a minimum of 30 days is a guideline, not requirement...but it sure wouldn't look good if the rule is brought in front of a judge.
The Affordable Care Act includes a long list of codified instructions about what's required under the law. However, like any major piece of legislation, many of the specific details are left up to the agency responsible for implementing the law.
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 Three of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 758,421 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Every week during Open Enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release enrollment snapshots for the HealthCare.gov platform, which is used by the Federally-facilitated Exchange and some State-based Exchanges. These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity, and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov.
The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations. In addition, the weekly snapshot only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
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 while New York and New Jersey are still far above every other state, other states are quickly catching up...and the trajectories of both North & South Dakota are incredibly disturbing in particular.
ST. PAUL, Minn.—The Minnesota Insulin Safety Net Program, launched earlier this year, provides a pathway for Minnesotans in urgent need of insulin (less than a 7-day supply on hand) to access the life-saving drug through their pharmacy. The program—implemented by MNsure, the state's health insurance marketplace, and the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy—was created to help Minnesotans facing difficulty affording their insulin.
The Insulin Safety Net Program is made up of two parts: 1) The urgent need program for eligible Minnesotans to receive a once-per-year 30-day supply of insulin immediately at their pharmacy for no more than a $35 copay; and 2) The continuing need program for eligible Minnesotans to receive up to a year supply of insulin for no more than $50 per 90-day refill.
Interested individuals should visit MNinsulin.org to see if they qualify and learn how to apply.
Coloradans Are Getting Covered During the Pandemic
DENVER – Nearly 30,500 Coloradans signed up for a health insurance plan through Connect for Health Colorado’s Marketplace between Nov. 1 and Nov. 20. Through the first three weeks of the Open Enrollment period, approximately 73 percent of applicants qualify for financial help to help pay their monthly premiums.
Unlike many of the state-based exchanges, the Colorado ACA exchange is not "front-loading" their autorenewals of existing enrollees. They address this further down the press release:
“Unfortunately, the pandemic is continuing to grow and affect our communities. That’s why it’s more important than ever that Coloradans have access to affordable and quality health coverage.” said Chief Executive Officer Kevin Patterson. “I urge Coloradans to connect with us online, over the phone, or by making a virtual appointment with a certified Broker or Assister. We are here to make your enrollment as easy as possible.”
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.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which come 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.
Note that a few weeks ago I finally went through and separated out swing districts. I'm defining these as any county which where the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was less than 6 percentage points either way in 2016. There's a total of 198 Swing Counties using this criteria (out of over 3,200 total), containing around 38.5 million Americans out of over 330 million nationally, or roughly 11.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, November 21st (click image for high-res version). Blue = Hillary Clinton won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
Over at Xpostfactoid, my colleague Andrew Sprung has been doing a great job of tracking ACA Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this past February/March at the macro (national) level, by looking at around a dozen states which have monthly reports available. He puts the overall enrollment growth rate at 23.6% from February thorugh October 2020.
Access Health CT, Connecticut's ACA exchange, is posting updates to their Open Enrollment Period (OEP) numbers every Friday. Last week they reported 99,952 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) selections during the first 13 days of the 2021 OEP, which sounds more impressive than it is, since 97,256 of those were current enrollees having their auto-renewals front-loaded; only 2,696 of them are actually new enrollees. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
This week, they report that they have 100,094 total QHP selections, of which 4,237 are new. On the surface this sounds off...shouldn't it be 101,493 total? I'm pretty sure the reason for the discrepancy is that not every current enrollee actually renews/re-enrolls for the following year. The exchange plugs them in as renewing, but they can still go in and actively cancel their renewal, which reduces the total a bit. In this case, it sounds like 1,399 current enrollees have done so over the past week. This gives a net increase of 142 over the past week, or 20 per day.
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.
Still, The Graph remains a fun way of visualizing ACA Open Enrollment trends. Again, the dotted lines show last year's enrollment patterns for HealthCare.Gov, the 13 state-based exchanges (SBE) and BHP enrollments in Minnesota & New York. This year the lines will shift slightly due to Pennsylvania and New Jersey splitting off onto their own state-based exchanges, but the final totals will likely be similar...or perhaps not!
In Week Two of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 803,741 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Every week during Open Enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release enrollment snapshots for the HealthCare.gov platform, which is used by the Federally-facilitated Exchange and some State-based Exchanges. These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity, and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov.
The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations. In addition, the weekly snapshot only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
NATIONAL COALITION LAUNCHES “GET COVERED 2021” URGING AMERICA TO MASK UP AND GET INSURED – FOCUS ON COVID AND COVERAGE FOR 16 MILLION AMERICANS ELIGIBLE FOR FINANCIAL HELP NOW
“Get Covered” is a call to wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID as well as a public statement that you want your family and friends to get health insurance.
COVID underscores why insurance matters - but not just because of the pandemic - coverage can help people stay healthy and provide a pathway to care for diseases like cancer, diabetes, and many others that impact people’s lives.
Get Covered 2021 will focus on getting the estimated 16 million uninsured people across America eligible for financial help – through their Affordable Care Act marketplace, or free coverage through Medicaid – insurance coverage now.
The Get Covered 2021 coalition announced that December 10th will be Get Covered America Day -- a day of action where everyone will be encouraged to keep wearing their mask and post a picture of themselves on social media, including a personal message about how friends, family and neighbors can get financial help for insurance now, sharing the website GetCovered2021.org and using the hashtag #GetCovered2021.
Over at Xpostfactoid, my colleague Andrew Sprung has been doing a great job of tracking ACA Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this past February/March at the macro (national) level, by looking at around a dozen states which have monthly reports available. He puts the overall enrollment growth rate at 23.6% from February thorugh October 2020.
I've decided to take a closer look at individual states. The graph below shows how many Arizonans have been actively enrolled their Medicaid expansion program (awkward named the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS):
As I've noted several times before, two more states have split off from the federal ACA health insurance exchange (HealthCare.Gov) this year. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have joined twelve other states (and DC) in operating their own full ACA enrollment platform.
Over at Xpostfactoid, my colleague Andrew Sprung has been doing a great job of tracking ACA Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this past February/March at the macro (national) level, by looking at around a dozen states which have monthly reports available. He puts the overall enrollment growth rate at 23.6% from February thorugh October 2020.
Instead of replicating his work, I decided to take a closer look at individual states. The graph below shows how many Alaskans have been actively enrolled in our Medicaid expansion program (Healthy Michigan) every month since it was launched in September 2015:
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Since the start of MNsure's open enrollment period on November 1, nearly 102,000 Minnesotans have signed up for 2021 private health insurance coverage – approximately 10% more than this time last year.
MNsure's open enrollment period runs until December 22, 2020, a week longer than the federal open enrollment period.
“Every Minnesotan should have the peace of mind that comes with knowing you've got comprehensive health coverage, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said MNsure CEO Nate Clark. “You can sign up through MNsure.org through December 22 for coverage beginning January 1, 2021. Don’t delay. Contact a MNsure-certified assister who can walk you through the enrollment process.”
Over at Xpostfactoid, my colleague Andrew Sprung has been doing a great job of tracking ACA Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this past February/March at the macro (national) level, by looking at around a dozen states which have monthly reports available. He puts the overall enrollment growth rate at 23.6% from February thorugh October 2020.
Instead of replicating his work, I decided to take a closer look at individual states, starting with my own: Michigan. The graph below shows how many Michiganders have been actively enrolled in our Medicaid expansion program (Healthy Michigan) every month since it was launched in April 2014 (we had a 3-month delay in the program due to the state legislature refusing to implement the new law with immediate effect; I have no idea why):
Health Insurance Coverage is More Important Than Ever – In Person Help Still Available during New Statewide Restrictions
The 2021 open enrollment period is underway, and Washingtonians are now signing up for health plans, including in new Cascade Care health plans. After months of a global pandemic – needs have changed due to job loss, or working from home, or family income changes. Individuals seeking health coverage can now shop more options this year, along with financial assistance, by visiting Washington Healthplanfinder to sign up for health and dental coverage.
“With infection rates climbing and economic uncertainty across Washington state, now is the time to sign up for health coverage,” said Chief Executive Officer Pam MacEwan. “There are many resources available to help individuals understand their options.”
It’s still 2020, so it only seems appropriate that we all have a lot on our plates. Despite the Texas v. California court case causing some news as it went before the Supreme Court this week, we continue to stay focused on our current Open Enrollment Period.
It is of note this year that individuals making up to $51,040 per year or a household of four making up to $104,800 annually may be eligible for financial help to lower their monthly premiums, healthcare discounts, or both. Nearly three quarters of all Connect for Health Colorado enrollments are financially assisted.
And, since plans and prices change every year, you can point people to our Quick Cost and Plan Finder Tool to see their options.
LANSING – Emergency orders Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has issued under the Emergency Powers of Governor Act are struck down, effective immediately, the Michigan Supreme Court said Monday in a 4-3 order that added an exclamation mark to an Oct. 2 ruling.
...Monday's Supreme Court ruling is in response to a lawsuit brought by the Michigan Legislature. The Oct. 2 ruling, which was a 4-3 decision striking down the Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945, was in response to questions sent to the court by a federal judge handling a lawsuit brought by medical service providers in western Michigan.
Monday's ruling means hundreds of thousands of Michiganders could lose their unemployment benefits "in a matter of days," Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said. Among the orders struck down, and not replaced by a health department order, is one that extended Michigan unemployment benefits to 26 weeks, up from 20.
House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, hailed the ruling.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which come 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.
Note that a few weeks ago I finally went through and separated out swing districts. I'm defining these as any county which where the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was less than 6 percentage points either way in 2016. There's a total of 198 Swing Counties using this criteria (out of over 3,200 total), containing around 38.5 million Americans out of over 330 million nationally, or roughly 11.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, November 14th (click image for high-res version). Blue = Hillary Clinton won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
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.
Access Health CT, Connecticut's ACA exchange, is posting updates to their Open Enrollment Period (OEP) numbers every Friday. Last week they reported 99,406 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) selections during the first 6 days of the 2021 OEP, which sounds more impressive than it is, since 98,127 of those are current enrollees having their auto-renewals front-loaded; only 1,279 of them are actually new enrollees. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
This week, they report that they have 99,952 total QHP selections, of which 2,696 are new. On the surface this sounds off...shouldn't it be 100,823 total? I'm pretty sure the reason for the discrepancy is that not every current enrollee actually renews/re-enrolls for the following year. The exchange plugs them in as renewing, but they can still go in and actively cancel their renewal, which reduces the total a bit. In this case, it sounds like 871 current enrollees have done so over the past week. This gives a net increase of 546 over the past week, or 78 per day.
The Washington ACA exchange has reported their initial numbers, and like Connecticut, the top figure is a bit misleading: 182,000 Washingtonians enrolled in the first four days!...except that, again, 99% of these are current exchange enrollees having their auto-renewals front-loaded:
Washington Healthplanfinder reminds Washingtonians that open enrollment has started, encouraging those seeking health coverage to visit WAhealthplanfinder.org to shop, choose, and save on health and dental coverage.
“Our focus remains on encouraging customers to review their options and sign up for coverage that meets their needs,” said Exchange Chief Executive Officer, Pam MacEwan. “The 2021 open enrollment period has begun, and residents should use this opportunity to access coverage that will last them all year.”
Every Open Enrollment Period (OEP) for for the past several years, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) have issued a Weekly Snapshot Enrollment Report including the top-line Qualified Health Plan (QHP) enrollment data via HealthCare.Gov for that week along with the cumulative totals. They normally post these reports, which run Sunday - Saturday, on the following Wendesday...but yesterday came and went without one being released this year.
Given the insanity surrounding last week's Presidential election (along with the results) and the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, I was beginning to wonder whether they'd bother issuing those reports at all. Fortunately, they followed through late this afternoon:
Week 1, November 1-November 7, 2020
In week one of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 818,365 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Nevada Health Link connects consumers to VSP Individual Vision Plans, in time for Open Enrollment 2021
Carson City, Nev. – The Silver State Health Insurance Exchange (Exchange), the state agency that connects Nevadans to Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through the online State Based Exchange (SBE), known as Nevada Health Link, announces a partnership with VSP® Individual Vision Plans, an offering of VSP Vision Care, the only national not-for-profit vision benefits company.
The Open Enrollment Period for 2021 insurance plans runs from Nov. 1, 2020 through Jan. 15, 2021. Health plans offered through Nevada Health Link are ideal for Nevadans who don’t qualify for Medicare or Medicaid but still need financial assistance; those who don’t have employee-sponsored health insurance, including independent contractors and gig workers; and anyone seeking comprehensive, quality and affordable plans.
Way back in October 2013, when the first ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) launched, there were infamously massive technical problems with the federal exchange (HealthCare.Gov) as well as some of the state-based exchanges (such as those in Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii).
Over the next few years, some of those exchange websites were replaced with brand-new ones (MA & MD). Some of the states scrapped theirs altogether and moved onto the mothership at HC.gov (OR, HI & NV, although Nevada has since split back off onto their own exchange again, and seems to have gotten it right this time).
Last Friday, Access Health CT, Connecticut's state-based ACA exchange, posted their first 2021 Open Enrollment Period data numbers, and the first QHP enrollment number looks pretty eye-popping at first glance: 99,406 Nutmeggers enrolled in the first 6 days! Wow! Only around 108,000 enrolled throughout the entire 2020 OEP, so that's pretty impressive...
...except that I'm pretty sure that 99% of this figure consists of automatic renewals of their existing exchange enrollees. The next number down, 1,279, is their "2021 OE Acquisition Summary" number. In other words, it looks like Access Health CT has 98,127 people currently enrolled in exchange plans who have been auto-renewed for 2021, plus another 1,279 new enrollees who actually signed up in the first six days.
The timing of this press release is a little odd; it came out on November 9th, even though the 2021 ACA Open Enrollment Period actually launched on November 1st. In fact, in California specifically, they've been allowing existing enrollees to actively renew/re-enroll for 2021 since October 1st!
Given the insanity of this year's Presidential election on November 3rd, along with the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, I can hardly blame CoveredCA for the delay, however; after all, this is the first Open Enrollment update I've posted since it kicked off on Nov. 1st as well...
Covered California Officially Launches Open Enrollment with Millions of Masks to Encourage Californians to “Get Covered/Stay Covered” and a New Ad Campaign
So, the idiotic, asinine and otherwise absurd GOP-brought, Trump-supported lawsuit to strike down the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act finally had its (presumably final) day in court today...the United States Supreme Court, that is.
Defending the ACA were California Solicitor General Michael Mongan and Donald Verrilli, who is the former U.S. Solicitor General, and who was working on behalf of the House Democrats, I believe. For the plaintiffs, you had the Texas Solicitor General, Kyle Hawkins and Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall (note the "acting" descriptor...Trump has tons of unconfirmed appointees...)
Remember, there are three main questions for the SCOTUS to consider about the lawsuit:
Last night I threw together my very first online ACA seminar for about 40 people (plus an unknown number of Facebook Live viewers, assuming I set that up correctly). It runs about two hours; the first half was pretty much an updated version of my normal "3-Legged Stool" explainer.
For the second half, however, I was joined by University of Michigan law professor & ACA expert Nicholas Bagley who helped explain the intricacies of the absurd CA v. TX lawsuit to strike down the entire Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (aka "TX v. Azar", "Tx. v. U.S." or, as I prefer to call it, "Texas Fold'em".
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which come 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.
Note that a few weeks ago I finally went through and separated out swing districts. I'm defining these as any county which where the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was less than 6 percentage points either way in 2016. There's a total of 198 Swing Counties using this criteria (out of over 3,200 total), containing around 38.5 million Americans out of over 330 million nationally, or roughly 11.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, November 7th (click image for high-res version). Blue = Hillary Clinton won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
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.
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.
In January 2021, the U.S. Senate will have at least 48 Democrats (including 2 Senators who caucus with the Dems) and at least 50 Republicans.
The last two seats are both in Georgia. Elected GOP Senator David Perdue was up for re-election against Democrat Jon Ossoff and a Libertarian candidate, while appointed GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler was running for the first time in a "jungle primary" against another Republican and several Democrats in a special election.
Under Georgia state law, if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote (plus 1) in the November election, the top two finishers go on to a runoff election on January 5th.
There's still millions of ballots left to count, and no doubt some legal battles gearing up, but as of 11:00am on November 4th, the most likely scenario going into 2021 will be:
Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
Democrats will continue to control the U.S. House of Representatives, albeit with a smaller margin than they have today.
Republicans will continue to control the U.S. Senate, albeit with a smaller margin than today (either 52-48 or possilbly 51-49 depending on an upcoming runoff election in Georgia).
The Texas Fold'em lawsuit (official name: CA v. TX, formerly TX v. Azar) is scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (6-3 conservative) just 6 days from today, on November 10th.
Keep in mind, however, that while the hearing will happen next week, their actual decision isn't expected to be announced until next spring...most likely between April and June.
I'm about to leave to start my shift as a poll worker in this, the most important U.S. election of our lives. I've been told I might be working until as late as midnight or even later, and will likely be sequestered all day, so I won't be able to update this site or social media.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which come 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.
Note that a few weeks ago I finally went through and separated out swing districts. I'm defining these as any county which where the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was less than 6 percentage points either way in 2016. There's a total of 198 Swing Counties using this criteria (out of over 3,200 total), containing around 38.5 million Americans out of over 330 million nationally, or roughly 11.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, October 31st (click image for high-res version). Blue = Hillary Clinton won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
