Last week, after the latest quarterly Gallup survey came out stating that the uninsured rate among U.S. adults had dropped to just 11.4%, I did some number-crunching and pointed out that:
About 6.5 million of those 33 million are undocumented immigrants who are therefore not eligible for coverage via the ACA anyway
Another 3.7 million are folks caught in the "Medicaid Gap" in 21 Republican-controlled states...these are people who a) make less than 100% of the federal poverty line (making them ineligible for federal tax credits to purchase private policies) but b) aren't eligible for traditional Medicaid either, meaning they're basically screwed.
When you subtract those two populations, it leaves roughly 22.8 million people who are still uninsured. So, who are they?
Well, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of 2014, there were roughly 13.8 million uninsured eligible for Medicaid (either traditional or via ACA expansion). Since then, thanks to several more states going through with expanding the program (Pennsylvania, Indiana and, any day now, Montana), this number has increased to around 14.3 million. According to the March Medicaid report released by CMS in June, there's been a net increase of 12.2 million Medicaid/CHIP enrollees since 2013 (I'm not including the 950K "bulk transferees" brought onto the program prior to October 2013, since most of those were already covered by some other state-run program).
As most people know, website owners have a variety of methods of tracking the metrics of who's visiting their site, including tools like Google Analytics and the like. Depending on which analytics solution you use, you can track not only how many people visit per hour/day/week/month, but their exact IP addresses, rough latitude/longitude, what type of operating system/web browser they use and even the resolution of the monitor they're viewing the site on.
You can also generally track how they found your site--that is, which link on which other website brought them to yours. For example, most visitors who don't load the site directly come from Twitter or via Facebook, as you'd expect, but other major traffic sources are links from the Washington Post, Slate, the MaddowBlog, Salon or other "official" news/opinion sites. Obviously whenever Paul Krugman gives me a shout-out at the NY Times, that causes a big spike. After that, it tends to be healthcare-specific sites such as healthinsurance.org, Modern Healthcare and so on, followed by other "unofficial" blogs such as Xpostfactoid, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Balloon Juice etc.
And then, every once in awhile, I'll receive traffic from...a different type of website.
Colorado is one of the few ACA exchanges issuing monthly reports during the off-season. Until now, these reports, while chock full of data, have made it rather confusing to separate out the key number which I'm looking for: The cumulative number of 2015 QHP selections and the currently effectuated QHPs, because of their tendency to mix SHOP and Dental policies into the mix.
Japanese holdouts (残留日本兵 Zanryū nipponhei?, "remaining Japanese soldiers") or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan ending World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles, or simply were not aware of it because communications had been cut off by the United States island hopping campaign.
They continued to fight the enemy forces, and later local police, for years after the war was over. Some Japanese holdouts volunteered during the First Indochina War and Indonesian War of Independence, to free Asian colonies from Western control despite these having once been colonial ambitions of Imperial Japan during World War II.
Intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer on Lubang Island in thePhilippines in March 1974, and Teruo Nakamura, who was stationed on Morotai Island in Indonesia and surrendered in December 1974, were the last confirmed holdouts, though rumors persisted of others.
Since the Supreme Court has ensured the viability the federally-facilitated exchanges, they could be the best option for other states with problematic marketplaces. “There is no new money now to build new infrastructure, and there are no grants available to fix these systems if they’re struggling,” said Heather Howard, the director of the Princeton University program that advises states on exchange building, told the Times. “So the only path forward may be to use HealthCare.gov.”
Did Obama Cover Up Real Reason for Obamacare Website Crash?
Nearly two years after its failed launch, there still remain more questions than answers, but perhaps the recent King v. Burwell case has subtly lifted the veil on the real reason for the crash.
Hmmmm..."subtly lifted the veil"? I'm intrigued! Do go on...
At the time of the HealthCare.gov crash, Obama’s media spin doctors insisted the site’s failure was caused by “extremely high” traffic, as Sebelius reiterated in an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. According to Sebelius, nearly 20 million people visited the site in just the first three weeks, a volume site designers simply weren’t prepared for.
Anyone over the age of 40 or so--regardless of their political stripes--should demand that, henceforth, July 12 be given the same Unofficial National Holiday status that, say, Star Wars Day has received.
A few weeks ago I reported that Indiana's implentation of the ACA's Medicaid expansion provision, which kicked off at the end of January, was already up to 237,000 enrollees.
Industry representatives say Indiana's expanded health care program for low-income residents has functioned smoothly in the months since it was implemented following federal approval.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in January approved expanding the existing Healthy Indiana Plan into a larger program that Gov. Mike Pence has dubbed HIP 2.0. That program uses federal Medicaid funds under President Barack Obama's health care law to cover people with incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
State enrollment in HIP 2.0 has climbed to nearly 290,000 participants, with about 60 percent of those people under age 40, according to state figures presented Thursday during a public hearing in Indianapolis on the program.
For the first time, the Obama administration has deployed an important new power it has under the Affordable Care Act: proposing to pay doctors and hospitals based on the quality of care they provide, regardless of whether they want to be paid that way.
It rolled out two such programs this week. One would require all hospitals in 75 metropolitan areasto accept a flat fee for the costs associated with a hip or knee replacement — including the costs of surgery, medications, the joint implant and rehabilitation. And if the quality of the care is not judged to be good, Medicare will take back some of the money it paid. Another program would increase or decrease payments tohome health agencies in nine states, depending on how they perform on certain quality measurements.
This story is mainly included for reference if/when I'm able to do a market share/rate increase analysis of Illinois in the future:
Yesterday, after the big quarterly Gallup survey was released showing a total reduction in the uninsured among U.S. adults from 18% in October 2013 down to 11.4% in June 2015, I went ahead and whipped up a more detailed graph which 1) includes the full range starting from 0% (Gallup's official graph cuts off the first 10%, which gives a bit of a false impression of the true situation); 2) includes the 2 key dates: March 2010 (when the ACA was signed into law) and October 2013 (when the ACA exchanges/Medicaid expansion enrollments started); and 3) also includes 2 extremely important color-coded areas: The 3.7 million people caught in the "Medicaid Gap" in 21 Republican-controlled states, and the millions of uninsured, undocumented immigrants nationwide.
