With all that done, here's the state-by-state breakdown of how many people I expect will be receiving federal tax credits for their ACA exchange-purchased healthcare policy as of July 1st, 2015:
March 2015: Average Advanced Premium Tax Credit by State
Consumers with household incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the FPL may qualify for an advance premium tax credit, which helps make their coverage more affordable throughout the year by lowering their share of monthly premium costs. Consumers who qualify for APTC may choose how much of the advanced premium tax credit to apply to their premiums each month, up to the maximum amount for which they are eligible.
This actually isn't as much of a surprise to me as you might think. Between the increased transparency during the 2nd Open Enrollment Period (weekly state-by-state snapshot reports for HC.gov) and especially with the King v. Burwell Supreme Court decision coming up later this month, I was expecting HHS to release some sort of update about just how many people are currently enrolled in exchange-based private policies...in particular, the number who are receiving Advance Premium Tax Credits across the 34 states at risk of losing theirs.
Yesterday I posted about Healthcare.Gov's new "Rate Review" tool, and how, while it's very handy for seeing which comapanies are trying to jack up their premium rates by more than 10% next year (and allowing public comment on them), it's essentially useless for trying to calculate the overall average rate increase in a given state (or in some cases, even for a given company in that state).
I used Connecticut as an example: The actual statewide, weighted average increase request is around 7.7%, but if you only use the Rate Review database as your source it makes it look like it's over 18%.
Officials from states across the nation flew to Chicago in early May for a secret 24-hour meeting to discuss their options if the Supreme Court rules they have to operate their own exchanges in order for residents to get health-insurance subsidies.
Over the course of an evening reception, a day’s presentations and a Mexican buffet at the O’Hare International Airport’s Hilton hotel, some of those officials concluded their options are likely unworkable.
Unfortunately, for all the Top Secret Urgency, their conclusion was pretty grim...
The new Rate Review searchable database added to Healthcare.Gov should make it much easier to figure out the weighted average rate change requests for every state. It's clean, simple to use, includes all 50 states (plus DC and even throws in U.S. Territories to boot!), lets you filter out transitional policies and pre-2016 years and so on. In addition, the layout is consistent and doesn't require downloading 6,000 page PDF files (!)
Yes, in terms of following the requirements of the HHS Dept, it's very useful for people to look up their particular company in their state, see what their "average" rate increase request is and submit cranky public comments (which will in most cases probably be ignored, but hey, you never know).
As it happens, Healthcare.Gov has set up a nifty new section devoted to displaying a searchable database of exactly this type of data, RateReview.Healthcare.Gov:
This has already been proven to be highly useful for things like this Enroll America map which breaks out private exchange enrollment by county, as well as my own entry which provides the tools for breaking out roughly how many people an adverse King v. Burwell ruling would lose their federal tax credits in each state/county/zip code (I've only done this by state; doing the actual county/zip code work would take a tremendous amount of work).
The GOP’s months-long debate over when and how to send a repeal of Obamacare to the president’s desk now appears to have an answer.
They can’t do it all at once.
Repealing the law “root and branch” is probably out of the question, the chamber’s parliamentarian is hinting, because some parts of Obamacare don’t affect the federal budget. That’s a must in order to use the obscure procedure known in Senate parlance as reconciliation, which allows lawmakers to avoid the 60-vote filibuster hurdle and pass bills on a simple majority vote.
That’s not the GOP’s only problem. Under those rules any Obamacare repeal has to reduce — not increase — the deficit. So Republicans will have to pick and choose which parts of the Affordable Care Act they most want to ditch.
