via MNsure (this was actually posted a couple of weeks ago but I missed it):
ST. PAUL, Minn.—99,688 Minnesotans have come to MNsure.org and enrolled in private health insurance through a special enrollment period (SEP) or received eligibility for a public assistance program (Medical Assistance or MinnesotaCare) since March 1. As expected, sign-ups across all programs have been driven by concerns amid the pandemic.
"It’s never been more important to know you’re covered. That’s why we are so glad to have been able to help almost 100,000 Minnesotans gain access to comprehensive health care coverage," said CEO Nate Clark. "But we know there are others out there who are currently uninsured and may qualify to sign up. If you’ve recently lost your employer-sponsored health insurance, had an income change, or have another qualifying life event, come to MNsure.org to see if you’re eligible."
The graph below is a linear depiction of how COVID-19 has spread across the state of Florida every day since March 20th.
As you can see, the thick orange line shows the ramping up of testing, the thick blue line is the increase in cases and the thick red line is the (official) rate of fatalities. In order to fit all three measurements on the same graph in a presentable way, the scale is different for each: Tests are per 100 residents; cases are per thousand, and deaths are per ten thousand.
The thinner lines are for Orange County, Florida specifically...and there's a reason for that which I'll explain below.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: I've been alerted to the fact that I had data entry errors in at least two of the states last weekend (Michigan and Texas). It looks like the sort order got messed up during the data transfer in those states. As a result, at least 2 of the "Top 40" / "Top 100" counties I had listed were wrong. I've deleted the spreadsheets for this week and will triple-check everything for this weekend's weekly update. My apologies for the error.
Now that I've brought all 50 states (+DC & the U.S. territories) up to date, I'm going to be posting a weekly ranking of the 40 U.S. counties (or county equivalents) with the highest per capita official COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
Again, I've separates the states into two separate spreadsheets:
Over at healthinsurance.org, Louise Norris has already done the work for me in tracking down the preliminary 2021 individual and small group market rate changes for the state of Maine:
Average premiums expected to decrease Maine’s exchange in 2021
Maine’s three individual market insurers filed proposed rates for 2021 in June 2020 (average proposed rate changes are summarized here by the Maine Bureau of Insurance). For the second year in a row, average rates are expected to decrease for 2021:
UPDATE 9/29/20: There have been several important developments in the #TexasFoldEm case since I posted this back in June.
For one thing, another 81,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 and another 4.7 million Americans have tested positive for it.
For another, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away, and Donald Trump has already formally nominated an ultra-right wing zealot who is on the record as wanting the ACA to be struck down to replace her. His nominee's confirmation hearings have already been scheduled to start in mid-October, meaning that there's a very good chance that she'll be confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate before Election Day...in which case the Texas Fold'em case to strike down the entire ACA could end up being the very first case she hears as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on November 10th.
With this in mind, I figured this would be a good time to re-up the analysis below.
Here's my weekly update of the spread of COVID-19 across all 50 states, DC & PR over time, from March 20th through June 27th, 2020, in official cases per thousand residents.
I've given up trying to tie every trend line to the state name; it simply gets too crowded near the bottom even with a small font size, so I've grouped some of them together where necessary.
Note that this graph doesn't take into account any of the rumored undercounts in Florida, Georgia etc...these are based on the official reports from the various state health departments. If and when those are ever modified retroactively I'll update the data accordingly.
I've highlighted the three states with the ugliest increases in per capit cases over the past week or so (Arizona, Florida and Texas), along with New York and Michigan for reference.
Click the image itself for a high-resolution version.
Note: The sudden jumps in New York and Massachusetts reflect reporting methodology changes; MA started including probable COVID-19 cases, while New York added a batch of 15,000 positive antibody tests results they hadn't been previously including.
Now that I've brought all 50 states (+DC & the U.S. territories) up to date, I'm going to be posting a weekly ranking of the 40 U.S. counties (or county equivalents) with the highest per capita official COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
Again, I've separates the states into two separate spreadsheets:
Most of the data comes from either the GitHub data repositories of either Johns Hopkins University or the New York Times. Some of the data comes directly from state health department websites.
Here's the top 40 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, June 27th:
For the past few months, I've been keeping track, to the best of my ability, of how many people have been enrolling in ACA exchange policies utilizing the COVID-19-specific Special Enrollment Periods which have been offered by 12 of the 13 state-based exchanges (SBEs). My most recent update brings the grand total of confirmed SEP enrollments to at least 260,000 across 8 states, averaging around 3,500 per day.
The actual number is obviously higher than this, of course, since I don't have any data from the other four state exchanges (DC, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont), although three of those four are pretty small anyway...and even in New York, their unique "Essential Plan" (the Basic Health Plan program established under the ACA itself) has likely been sucking up the bulk of individual market enrollees earning up to 200% FPL anyway...and you can enroll in the Essential Plan year-round regardless of the pandemic. I therefore doubt that NY's COVID SEP numbers for those earning more than 200% FPL are that dramatic. All told, I'd expect NY, RI, VT & DC to only add perhaps another 25,000 or so QHP enrollees to the table below:
Health Connector extends enrollment an additional month to July 23rd for uninsured individuals
On June 22, 2020, the Health Connector announced in an Administrative Bulletin an extension to the special enrollment period in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency through July 23, 2020 to assist uninsured Massachusetts residents seeking health coverage. (The extended enrollment period was previously set to end June 23.)
On April 14th, Covered California reported that 58,000 residents had enrolled in ACA exchange coverage during their COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period, of which roughly 20,000 did so via standard SEPs (losing coverage, moving, getting married/divorced, etc), while an additional 38,000 took advantage of the COVID-specific SEP.
