A few minutes ago I noted that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, currently in the hot seat for poisoning nearly 100,000 of his residents, has formally requested full Medicaid coverage for every Flint resident under the age of 21 (around 30,000 people, as far as I can tell). While my post was sarcastic, the need is real, and while it's revolting that Snyder would try to get the federal government to literally pay for his administration's crime, the move itself makes sense.
Here's a related development which makes sense as well (thanks to Rachel Karas for the link): A letter from U.S. Senator Gary Peters and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell (emphasis added):
Snyder to seek aid for Flint children exposed to lead
Michigan governor seeks to expand Medicaid to help at-risk young people exposed to lead in Flint during water crisis
Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday he will seek permission from the Obama administration to allow all young people in Flint the chance to receive publicly funded health care services for lead exposure amid the city's contaminated drinking water crisis.
...The White House and federal Department of Health and Human Services did not have an immediate response Tuesday to Snyder's initiative targeting Flint residents up to age 21 through the expansion of Medicaid.
Aside from HealthCare.Gov itself, the Rhode Island exchange is the only state-based exchange which provides weekly updates on a consistent basis. In addition, RI's updates cover the exact same 7-day periods as HC.gov's Snapshot reports, so they can often act as a bit of a harbinger of the larger report to come the following day. However, RI is also a tiny state with an even tinier ACA exchange population, in the 30K - 40K range, so it may be pointless to try and extrapolate nationally.
The Congressional Budget Office released their latest massive 225-page 10 year economic outlook report today. Obviously there's a ton of stuff there, but the part of most interest to me is, of course, their revised projections for ACA-related matters, both in terms of people and dollars.
Last March, they were still inexplicably projecting that a whopping 21 million people would sign up for ACA exchange policies...actually, even more than that, since 21M was projected to be the average enrolled per month. In order to achieve that, the actual enrollment tally would have to be several million higher since a) around 20% of enrollees wouldn't be signing up until after the January deadline (meaning they won't have coverage start until February or March) and b) general attrition via non-payments and drop-outs throughout the year. A good half of the increase over their projection of 11 million people for 2015 was based on the assumption that roughly 5 million additional people will shift from employer-sponsored insurance over to ACA exchanges:
First: While I'm incredibly flattered by Dr. Krugman's shout-out/support, I have to say that I'm really not comfortable with his referring to die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros". I was a strong Howard Dean supporter back in 2003-2004 myself, and never cared for the term "Deaniac" which was thrown about...and "Bernie Bros" doesn't just suggest a level of dedication, but implies that only college-age men support Sen. Sanders, which obviously isn't the case.
I happen to like Sen. Sanders himself regardless of the words/actions of his more, shall we say, "devoted" supporters, and while I happen to have chosen to support Sec. Clinton, it is of paramount importance that the Democratic nominee win in November regardless of whether it's Sec. Clinton or Sen. Sanders.
Second: If you'd prefer to read the referred-to entries instead of the Daily Kos cross-post (where you'll have to wait for 900+ comments to load), here's the original versions:
More than 2.7 million New Yorkers currently enrolled in coverage through NY State of Health • New Yorkers must enroll by January 31 for 2016 Coverage
ALBANY, N.Y. (January 25, 2016) – NY State of Health, the State’s official health plan Marketplace, is encouraging uninsured New Yorkers to learn about affordable health coverage options and enroll in a plan by January 31, 2016. To date,more than 2.7 million people are enrolled in health insurance through NY State of Health, including 1.9 million enrolled in Medicaid, and 827,000 enrolled in non-Medicaid coverage. This includes 210,000 children enrolled in Child Health Plus; 260,000 individuals enrolled in a Qualified Health Plan and 356,000 people in the new Essential Plan, a new and more affordable option for lower income New Yorkers.
Throughout the first two years of the ACA exchanges, the DCI exchange's official enrollment updates were simultaneously clear & simple as well as frustrating. On the one hand, they break out the numbers quite cleanly, such as this one from October 21st of last year:
From October 1, 2013 to October 16, 2015, 173,090 people have enrolled in health insurance coverage through DC Health Link in private insurance or Medicaid:
25,702 people enrolled in a private qualified health plan,
125,261 people have been determined eligible for Medicaid, and
22,127 people enrolled through the DC Health Link small business marketplace (includes Congressional enrollment)
On the other hand, as noted above, these numbers are cumulative, dating all the way back to October 2013 when the exchanges originally launched. This makes the numbers shown kind of useless for the same reason that Chrysler stating that they've sold 100 million cars since the company was founded tells you nothing about how many cars they've sold so far this year.
The final 2016 deadline to enroll in a qualifying healthcare plan for policies starting coverage as of March 1st officially ended as of MIDNIGHT on January 31st.
As usual however, there are a few caveats to this...but not as many as the past two years:
While this isn't an official update, yesterday they posted this blog entry, pushing today's deadline for February coverage (again, the final deadline for coverage starting in March is still January 31st, like every other state):
Washington Healthplanfinder has seen a continued increase in sign-ups as residents coming into the final days of open enrollment. An additional 11,000 customers have selected new or renewed health plans since the start of the new year, bringing the total number of sign-ups to 180,000 since open enrollment began on Nov. 1.
On a related note, earlier today I wrote about being proven correct in my projection that while the projected average 2016 premium rate hikes would end up being around 12-13% nationallyif everyone renewed their existing policies, if enough people shopped around, the national average would likely end up coming in below 10% after all.
Sure enough, the 8.5 million who enrolled via HC.gov through Christmas (which is likely to be over 60% of the total) ended up with an effective average rate hike of...just 9.1%.
Here's how it breaks out state by state. It doesn't include the state-based exchanges like California, Colorado, etc, nor are any enrollees since 12/26 included, but it still gives a pretty good picture of the overall situation. As you can see, 6 states did get slammed with 20% or higher hikes (ouch), while 10 states came in with increases of less than 5%, and two of them (Indiana and Maine) actually have lower rates on average than last year.
Again, these numbers will likely shift up or down slightly after the remaining enrollees are added in (likely around 5.5 million nationally), but for now, this is where things stand.
