Here's the difference that a state election can make:

Louisiana Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards has set an ambitious timeline for a Medicaid expansion, saying he wants to have government-funded health insurance cards in thousands more people's hands by July 1.

...that's assuming the Republican-led Legislature doesn't try to throw up any roadblocks seeking to slow down an expansion effort.

Edwards, a Democrat who takes office Monday, said he would issue an executive order "within 24 hours from being sworn in" that starts the work required to expand Medicaid as allowed under the federal healthcare law. Health coverage for the people who would be eligible for the insurance under the expansion, he said, would begin July 1.

...The incoming health secretary estimated that about 300,000 people, mainly the working poor, would be enrolled for Medicaid under an expansion.

Just a quick reminder: This Friday, January 15th, is the deadline for people to sign up for healthcare coverage that starts on February 1st in most states:

• The deadline for February coverage is Friday, January 15th in 46 states & DC.
• The deadline for February coverage is Saturday, January 23rd in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington State.

• The FINAL deadline, for coverage starting in March in all states (& DC) is Sunday, January 31st.

Exceptions: Aside from the normal "off-season" Special Enrollment Period (SEP) for getting married, giving birth, etc., it's important to note that anyone who lost their coverage due to one of the dozen Co-Ops which shut down in December still has until March 1st to enroll (h/t to Amy Lotven for the reminder):

Everyone is posting various tributes to the late, great David Bowie today. Most will likely relate to Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust or Under Pressure.

For my part, I'm posting something a little different. Instead of anything from his music career, here's the clip of Bowie's brief but oddly appropriately-cast role as Pontius Pilate opposite Willem DaFoe in Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ".

Hey, remember back in October when I was deeply concerned about the 1.5 million taxpayers receiving APTC (Advance Premium Tax Credits) via ACA exchange policies last year who were at risk of losing those tax credits this year because they either didn't know they had to file a tax return, knew but didn't get around to doing so, or filed their taxes but forgot to fill out/include Form 8962?

Remember how I later noted that my own wife and I were among those who fell into the second category? (Fortunately, we did file an amended return to take care of it.)

Some readers may wonder why I, a lifelong Michigan resident who authors a website devoted to healthcare issues, haven't posted anything about my home state's latest shame, the Flint Water Poisoning scandal.

The answer is pretty simple: What the hell else is there for me to add? Our governor, Rick Snyder, along with a bunch of people at the top levels of his administration, who he appointed, appear to be guilty of, at best, criminal negligence (and at worst, potential negligent manslaughter) of the 100,000 citizens of Flint, Michigan...all in order to "save money". In fact, they were so intent on "saving money" that they didn't even bother to spend the $100 per day that it apparently would have cost to prevent hundreds or potentially thousands of children from suffering permanent physiological and mental damage.

This isn't a huge update, especially given yesterday's ASPE report which pegged Connecticut's QHP tally at 102,066 as of December 26th, but every update helps:

JANUARY 8, 2016

As of this week, Access Health CT announced it has more than 104,000 individuals enrolled in qualified health plans. That number could change during the final weeks of open enrollment and as existing customers renew coverage.

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, who chairs the Access Health CT board, said the group is urging residents to check their healthcare coverage to make sure everything is correct for 2016. People without health insurance could face federal tax penalties.

...Access Health CT reported in late December over 34,000 new Connecticut customers had enrolled in health coverage since Nov. 1, on par with last year at this time. The new enrollment number represents 11,000 qualified health plan members and 23,000 Medicaid members.

One of the more obscure provisions of the ACA is the ability/funding for states to set up something called a "Basic Health Plan" for residents who are low income, but not that low income; it's sort of a "Medicaid Plus" program, in a way; here's the Kaiser Family Foundation's explanation:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) gives states the option to implement a Basic Health Program (BHP) that covers low-income residents through state-contracting plans outside the health insurance marketplace, rather than qualified health plans (QHPs). In March 2014, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued final regulations on the requirements for a BHP and the methodology for calculating federal payments to states. States can choose to implement BHP beginning in 2015.

I wrote about this last night as part of a larger piece, but the "Young Invincible Risk Pool" issue from yesterday's official Open Enrollment Report seems to be generating a lot of hand-wringing, so I decided to write something specifically about it.

One of the biggest concerns people have about the ACA exchanges is whether or not there are enough so-called "Young Invincibles" (ie, young adults aged 18-34 years old) in the market to help balance out the risk pool. The assumption is that "YI's" are considerably healthier than older folks, and therefore should help reduce the overall cost of medical services over the coming year. From an insurance carrier POV, it's a lot more profitable to have 10,000 healthy customers than 1,000 cancer or diabetes-ridden customers. In the past, of course, this meant that carriers would cherry-pick their enrollees; if they suspected you'd be a high risk customer, they'd simply tell you to go pound sand.

Now that I've managed to catch up with the "big picture" data dump from today's APSE Enrollment Report at both the national and state levels, it's time to dig into the meat of the report: Demographic Breakdown!

I'm not going to get into everything here, of course; a lot of this stuff is beyond my pay grade (which is to say, zilch, as I'm not paid to operate this site), while other stats just aren't of any particular interest to me, though obviously they may be useful to others. I'm mostly just running through all 81 pages (27 in the main report, 54 in the state-level supplemental) to see what catches my eye.

This entry will focus purely on the main report; I'll look at the supplemental report (which goes into state-level data) tomorrow.

Within the Marketplaces as a whole (all 50 states +DC):

(note: I'm live updating as I type this stuff, so keep checking back, I'll be adding more updates/analysis over the next hour)

Wow! OK, I'm back from my kid's field trip (nature center; they learned about how animals handle the winter via hibernation, migration & adaptation...learned about fossils...went on the nature trail to look for animal tracks...and even dissected owl pellets, hooray!!). Of all the days to miss a major HHS/CMS conference call, this was a big one. I'm furiously poring over the HHS Dept's ASPE January Enrollment Report  which, as I expected this morning, was just released less than two hours ago.