During the 2019 Open Enrollment Period, Vermont enrolled 25,223 people in on-exchange ACA individual market policies.

Just today, the state's ACA exchange, Vermont Health Connect, released a breakout of their January 2020 individual and small group market enrollment data as compared with January 2019.​​​​​​

The total number of Individual Market enrollees is 33,982 enrollees as of the end of January. It's important to understand that this is not the same as the number of people who enrolled on the ACA exchange during Open Enrollment, for two reasons: First, 2020 OEP in Vermont ended on December 15th, 2019; this data is as of January 31st. Second, the tables below include both on- and off-exchange enrollees, as opposed to on-exchange only.

I already called attention to this in my last post, but it's so long & filled with data wonk stuff that I'm reposting a separate entry to specifically highlight the SEP specifically:

  • Covered California is announcing a special-enrollment period through April 30 to address concerns that many Californians remain unaware of the new financial help or the new state penalty.

Hmmmm....the Special Enrollment Period is interesting. HealthCare.Gov and some state exchanges did something like this in spring 2015 (the first year people had to actually pay the mandate penalty) and managed to get around 210,000 more enrollees nationally. Of course, the penalty for 2014 was only $95 or 1% of income at the time...now it's up to $695/person or 2.5% of household income, so it's a bigger deal.

New Special-Enrollment Period Announced

When I last checked in on Covered California a couple of weeks ago, they still had two days left before their 2020 Open Enrollment deadline, and had managed to rack up 1.51 million on-exchange enrollments. This included 1.15 million renewals of existing enrollees, plus another 364,000 new enrollees.

I noted at the time that they had just barely beaten 2019's total with two days to go, and would have to add about 7,500 more to break 2018's total, and another 43,000 to beat 2017.

Well, they ended up in between the two, partly due to an overestimate of the renewal figure:

New California Policies Make Huge Difference, Increasing New Signups During Covered California’s Open Enrollment by 41 Percent

New Special-Enrollment Period Announced to Continue to Get Word Out on New Subsidies and Penalty

Back in December, Congress passed, and Donald Trump signed, a $1.4 Trillion federal spending package which included, among other things, the permanent elimination of several taxes which had been established to help fund the Affordable Care Act:

The Cadillac Tax: As Newsweek reported in 2017, the so-called "Cadillac tax" would have capped the tax deductions individuals could claim based on their health insurance benefits. It would have imposed a 40 percent excise tax on employer-sponsored plans that exceeded $10,000 in premiums per year for a single person or $27,500 for a family. The Cadillac tax was set to take effect in 2022.

I've written several times before about the multi-state scam being run by "Trinity Healthshare", aka "Aliera Healthcare":

New Hampshire:

The court also found that Aliera is a for-profit company and cannot qualify as a health care sharing ministry under state or federal law. The Insurance Department is concerned about potential fraudulent or criminal activity on the part of Aliera. Since the company may be an illegitimate health care sharing ministry, consumers should be aware that if they remain in an Aliera product, they may be covered by an unlicensed insurance company.

Unity Healthshare, now known as OneShare Health, was authorized by the court to reach out to Unity members about their options, and consumers who have purchased a Unity/Aliera product should be aware that they may be receiving this communication.

Washington State:

Last March I wrote an analysis of H.R.1868, the House Democrats bill that comprises the core of the larger H.R.1884 "ACA 2.0" bill. H.R.1884 includes a suite of about a dozen provisions to protect, repair and strengthen the ACA, but the House Dems also broke the larger piece of legislation down into a dozen smaller bills as well.

Some of these "mini-ACA 2.0" bills only make minor improvements to the law, or make improvements in ways which are important but would take a few years to see obvious results. Others, however, make huge improvements and would be immediately obvious, and of those, the single most dramatic and important one is H.R.1868.

The official title is the "Health Care Affordability Act of 2019", but I just call both it and H.R.1884 (the "Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019") by the much simpler and more accurate moniker "ACA 2.0".

Last March I wrote an analysis of H.R.1868, the House Democrats bill that comprises the core of the larger H.R.1884 "ACA 2.0" bill. H.R.1884 includes a suite of about a dozen provisions to protect, repair and strengthen the ACA, but the House Dems also broke the larger piece of legislation down into a dozen smaller bills as well.

Some of these "mini-ACA 2.0" bills only make minor improvements to the law, or make improvements in ways which are important but would take a few years to see obvious results. Others, however, make huge improvements and would be immediately obvious, and of those, the single most dramatic and important one is H.R.1868.

The official title is the "Health Care Affordability Act of 2019", but I just call both it and H.R.1884 (the "Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019") by the much simpler and more accurate moniker "ACA 2.0".

This just in from DC Health Link:

DC Health Link to Offer Even More Opportunities for Residents to Get Covered 

  • DCHBX Executive Board Votes to Allow Pre-Natal Special Enrollment Period and Four Other New Opportunities

Washington, DC – With Open Enrollment recently concluded, District residents and small businesses have new opportunities to sign up for health insurance coverage through DC Health Link. The DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority (DCHBX) Executive Board recently adopted recommendations from its Standing Advisory Board to create four Special Enrollment Periods (SEP) and an extended open enrollment period for DC small businesses.

This just broke moments ago, so I don't have a lot of details, but the bottom line is this:

US Appeals Court in DC rules today that Trump admin. unlawful in approving Arkansas Medicaid work requirement

— Stephanie Armour (@StephArmour1) February 14, 2020

Here's the opinion itself.

As always, University of Michigan Law Professor Nicholas Bagley has the skinny:

It's a clean win for the plaintiffs, and it comes in a short, decisive opinion written by Judge Sentelle -- a very conservative Reagan appointee. 

Before: PILLARD, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judges. Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

Yesterday, reporter and (pretty apparent) Bernie Sanders supporter Ryan Grim said the quiet part out loud in response to the news that the powerful Nevada Culinary Union isn't a fan of Medicare for All:

Hey @Culinary226, check in with your government affairs people. There are not 60 votes in the Senate to ban the private health insurance you got in your union negotiations, nor will there be after the election. You're gonna be okay.

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) February 12, 2020

Yes, apparently the new strategy to win over support from organizations which don't like one of the core tenets of your preferred candidate is to reassure them that there's absolutely zero chance of that tenet ever actually happening.

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