Nearly Three Quarters of New Yorkers Enrolled in Medicaid, Child Health Plus or the Essential Plan Have Renewed Their Coverage by the June Deadline; Renewal Strategies Are Working; Others Still Have Time to Act
New York Outperforming National Average as Reported by KFF
Monthly Dashboard Tracks Renewal Status, Demographics, and State Program Transitions During Public Health Emergency Unwind
ALBANY, N.Y. (July 18, 2023) – The New York State Department of Health today released the first issue of New York’s Public Health Emergency Unwind Dashboard, a monthly report reflecting data on renewal status, demographics, and program transitions for public health insurance enrollees, which shows renewal outreach strategies are working. The report indicates that roughly 72 percent of New Yorkers enrolled in Medicaid, Child Health Plus or the Essential Plan renewed their coverage before the June deadline to re-enroll and those who haven’t still have time to act to avoid potential lapses in coverage. As reported by KFF, the national renewal rate for states reporting data is 59 percent.
As I wrote about back in March and updated in May, New York's implementation of the ACA's Basic Health Plan provision (Section 1331 of the law) is called the Essential Plan. It currently serves over 1.1 million New Yorkers, or over 5x as many residents as ACA exchange plans do.
Under the ACA, most states have expanded Medicaid to people with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level. But people with incomes very close to the Medicaid eligibility cutoff frequently experience changes in income that result in switching from Medicaid to ACA’s qualified health plans (QHPs) and back. This “churning” creates fluctuating healthcare costs and premiums, and increased administrative work for the insureds, the QHP carriers and Medicaid programs.
The out-of-pocket differences between Medicaid and QHPs are significant, even for people with incomes just above the Medicaid eligibility threshold who qualify for cost-sharing subsidies.
The main distinction between the New Mexico and Minnesota approaches has to do with which existing publicly-funded healthcare program they're based on. While New Mexico went with Medicaid (which half the state's population is already enrolled in anyway), Minnesota is basing theirs on their Basic Health Plan program, MinnesotaCare. I first wrote about this back in February.
New York's implementation of the ACA's Basic Health Plan provision (Section 1331 of the law) is called the Essential Plan. It currently serves over eleven times as many people as Minnesota's "MinnesotaCare" program does (around 1.1 million vs. 100K). Part of this is obviously due to New York having a larger population, but that's only part of it (NY has 19.84M residents, just 3.5x higher than MN's 5.71M).
Under the ACA, most states have expanded Medicaid to people with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level. But people with incomes very close to the Medicaid eligibility cutoff frequently experience changes in income that result in switching from Medicaid to ACA’s qualified health plans (QHPs) and back. This “churning” creates fluctuating healthcare costs and premiums, and increased administrative work for the insureds, the QHP carriers and Medicaid programs.
In Oregon, Democrats passed a bill in March to establish a basic health program, the details of which are being ironed out by a task force that began meeting this week. In Kentucky, Republicans approved $4.5 million in state funds this spring to set up a basic health program, which was signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor. An estimated 85,000 Oregonians and at least 37,000 Kentuckians will be eligible to enroll in the plans as soon as next year.
Since March 2020, Aligned with Federal Continuous Coverage Requirements, Enrollment in NY State of Health Programs has Grown by 41 Percent
As the Post-Public Health Emergency Redetermination Process Begins, State Has Deployed Multi-pronged Strategy to Maximize Number of Consumers who Maintain Coverage
ALBANY, N.Y. (April 20, 2023) – NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace, today released the 2023 Health Insurance Coverage Update, a detailed summary of NY State of Health enrollment, including demographics, quality measures, and the cost savings realized by millions of New Yorkers who have comprehensive health insurance through the Marketplace. As of January 31, 2023, NY State of Health enrollment is nearly 6.9 million, or more than one in three New Yorkers across the state.
The main distinction between the New Mexico and Minnesota approaches has to do with which existing publicly-funded healthcare program they're based on. While New Mexico went with Medicaid (which half the state's population is already enrolled in anyway), Minnesota is basing theirs on their Basic Health Plan program, MinnesotaCare. I first wrote about this back in February.
Back in late January, I crunched the numbers on the total number of Americans who currently have healthcare coverage directly via the Affordable Care Act. This includes three categories: Exchange-based Qualified Health Plans (QHPs); the Basic Health Plan (BHP) progams in Minnesota and New York; and Medicaid Expansion in the 38 states (+DC) which had implemented it as of that point.
I concluded that the total numbers for each were roughly 15.4 million QHPs, 1.2 million BHPs and 23.5 million Medicaid expansion enrollees, or around 40.1 million people total.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed my estimates and even came in slightly higher, at around 40.2 million. They put effectuated QHPs at 15.6 million and Medicaid expansion enrollment at around 23.4 million.
In my post a few weeks ago about Minnesota's plan to dramatically expand their existing Basic Health Plan (BHP) program, MinnesotaCare, into a full-fledged Public Option open to residents not currently eligible for the program, I made an offhand reference to similar BHP expansion-related news happening in New York State. However, I haven't gotten around to actually writing about NY's BHP program until now.
New York's implementation of the ACA's BHP provision (Section 1331 of the law) is called the Essential Plan, and it already serves over eleven times as many people as Minnesota's does (around 1.1 million vs. 100K). Part of this is obviously due to New York having a larger population, but that's only part of it (NY has 19.84M residents, just 3.5x higher than MN's 5.71M).
There's been a LOT of buzz among healthcare wonks over the past week about major developments happening with the ACA's Basic Health Plan (BHP) programs in both Minnesota and New York State. This article is about Minnesota; I'll post about what's happening in New York separately.
Under the ACA, most states have expanded Medicaid to people with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level. But people with incomes very close to the Medicaid eligibility cutoff frequently experience changes in income that result in switching from Medicaid to ACA’s qualified health plans (QHPs) and back. This “churning” creates fluctuating healthcare costs and premiums, and increased administrative work for the insureds, the QHP carriers and Medicaid programs.
The out-of-pocket differences between Medicaid and QHPs are significant, even for people with incomes just above the Medicaid eligibility threshold who qualify for cost-sharing subsidies.
