DENVER — Between Nov.1 and Nov. 15, more than 21,000 Coloradans enrolled in health coverage for 2016, either in private health insurance purchased through the state health insurance Marketplace or in Medicaid, or Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+), according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado® and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
“We are very pleased with the number of initial sign-ups during the first two weeks of Open Enrollment,” said Connect for Health Colorado® CEO Kevin Patterson. “But I want to urge everyone to not put off their 2016 health insurance coverage. New customers and renewing customers have a number of choices to consider. I encourage all of our customers to review their options and complete their enrollment before the last-minute rush.”
I know nothing about the military, but I'll say this: For all the screaming and hollering by the Republican presidential candidates over everything that President Obama is supposedly doing wrong when it comes to battling ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh, or whatever the hell their name is this week), according to this story out of the L.A. Times, it sounds an awful lot like every one of their plans pretty much consist of slight modifications to what the Obama administration is already doing:
From the intensity of their rhetoric, the candidates seeking to replace President Obama might sound like they have policies for combating the Islamic State militants that are dramatically different from his. So far, they don't.
At a news conference Monday, Obama made clear that in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that Islamic State claimed to mastermind, he intends to stick with his plans.
Nov. 15--As a licensed health insurance agent, Sam Ross was used to seeing changes slipped into customers' plans during open enrollment season.
But he was surprised this month when he opened a letter from Highmark. The 60-year-old Southmont man discovered that his current plan, the Highmark Shared Cost Blue PPO 1000, which was eligible for premium tax credits on the Health Insurance Marketplace, was being discontinued -- and that he automatically would be enrolled in another plan not on the marketplace if he didn't take action before Dec. 15.
A Highmark representative said the company mailed letters to some customers -- though he wouldn't say how many or provide a list of plans being discontinued.
The company is "mapping" some customers on plans that are being discontinued into new plans, he said.
Factoring in the tax credit, the new plan would have cost Ross $481.02 more a month. It didn't come close to offering similar coverage, Ross said.
Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could use medical underwriting, along with the threat of rescission, to tell whether a new policy applicant was being truthful or not about their smoking status. Under the ACA, of course, it's illegal for insurance companies to ask any questions about your medical history or pre-existing conditions which you might have...with a few exceptions, the main ones being a) whether anyone on the policy is pregnant and b) whether anyone on the policy is a smoker (hopefully not the same people!).
I'm not sure how this press release slipped by me (it was posted quietly on Nov. 11th), but my eyebrows immediately shot up when I read the first bullet point...only to turn into eyerolls when I read the second one:
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, November 7, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL/FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of November 7, 2015:
30,680 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been auto-renewed into a 2016 plan.
306 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
I was out of town over the weekend, visiting Alabama for my niece's Bat Mitzvah; then, when we got back it turned out our broadband connection had gone out (I'm currently at the library while waiting for the AT&T guy to show up).
In any event, a lot of big news happened over the past few days. The biggest non-healthcare-related stories, of course, were the horrific ISIS attacks in both Beirut (over 40 killed, over 200 wounded) and Paris (over 120 killed, over 300 wounded). My deepest sympathies to the people of Lebanon and France.
Alabama's Republican governor says he is considering expanding Medicaid under ObamaCare in his state.
"We are looking at that,” Gov. Robert Bentley said Thursday, according to The Associated Press. “We have not made a final decision on that yet, exactly how that would work.”
Bentley indicated that expanding Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, could help get more doctors into rural parts of the state.
"I am concerned about the plight of the working poor,” he said. “If doctors are not paid for seeing those patients, doctors will not go to rural Alabama, because you can't expect a doctor to go to rural Alabama and lose money.”
The Republicans in two dozen states thought they were playing smart politics (with people's lives, but screw them, right?) when they denied Medicaid expansion, but this has since blown up in their faces, and has now become a potent issue for Democrats in several GOP-held states. I think I know why they thought this...and why it didn't work out the way they figured.
As far as I can tell, the Republican mindset was this: Poor people don't vote. Therefore, screwing over poor people = brownie points from the GOP base without any potential downside.
However, I think they forgot something important: Regular Medicaid might only apply to poor people, but the Medicaid expansion provided for by the ACA applies to many lower-middle class people...and they do vote (at least in greater numbers than the "dirt poor" anyway).
Of the 543,000 people who submitted applications and chose plans, 34% were new customers and 66% were re-enrolling, CMS said. Nearly 1.2 million people submitted applications for coverage.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell called the numbers a "solid start." But she warned that It’s difficult to directly compare this year to last year's start of open enrollment as it started on Nov. 15 last year.
"We know from past experience that people are deadline driven, so we don’t expect to see deadline effects for a few weeks," she said.
