When I wrote about the Halbig case earlier this summer (along with its kid brother, the King case), I was pretty sure that the Supreme Court wouldn't even get around to taking up the case (if they did at all) until next year. However, there's a chance that they might take up the second of these (King v. Burwell) this year after all...although the final decision still probably wouldn't come out until after OE2 is over next spring:
As I noted this morning, between the impending election on Tuesday, the upcoming 2nd Open Enrollment Period (henceforth to be designated "OE2" or hashtag #OE2), and a serious technical crisis with my day job which I've had to spend the past few days cleaning up, I have upwards of 150 ACA/Obamacare-related emails clogging up my In Box.
Most of them are worth a mention, but there's no possible way I can do a full entry/commentary/analysis on most of them, so I'm just doing roundup-style summary mentions:
A new report by Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University examines the challenge of maintaining enriched health care for pregnant women who are enrolled in Covered California and who are also eligible for Medi-Cal, which includes the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program (CPSP). The CPSP, whose roots are in one of the nation's most successful programs ever developed for low-income pregnant women, makes enriched maternity care available to pregnant women facing elevated health, environmental and social risks on account of their economic status.
As I noted this morning, between the impending election on Tuesday, the upcoming 2nd Open Enrollment Period (henceforth to be designated "OE2" or hashtag #OE2), and a serious technical crisis with my day job which I've had to spend the past few days cleaning up, I have upwards of 150 ACA/Obamacare-related emails clogging up my In Box.
Most of them are worth a mention, but there's no possible way I can do a full entry/commentary/analysis on most of them, so I'm just doing roundup-style summary mentions:
Medi-Cal has no open enrollment period. State health officials are quick to point out that people can enroll for Medi-Cal any day of the year.
But Covered California's three-month open enrollment period starting Nov. 15 is expected to boost signups for Medi-Cal, as well -- even though the open enrollment period doesn't apply to Medi-Cal.
As I noted this morning, between the impending election on Tuesday, the upcoming 2nd Open Enrollment Period (henceforth to be designated "OE2" or hashtag #OE2), and a serious technical crisis with my day job which I've had to spend the past few days cleaning up, I have upwards of 150 ACA/Obamacare-related emails clogging up my In Box.
Most of them are worth a mention, but there's no possible way I can do a full entry/commentary/analysis on most of them, so I'm just doing roundup-style summary mentions:
Consumers in Georgia and three other states who were helped by navigators for the 2014 insurance exchanges tended to be people of color who were not financially secure, a recently released report says.
Navigators, who are specially trained in the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as "Obamacare," provide face-to-face, in-person help for consumers seeking information about health insurance policies in the state exchanges, also called marketplaces.
Between the impending election on Tuesday, the upcoming 2nd Open Enrollment Period (henceforth to be designated "OE2" or hashtag #OE2) and a serious technical crisis with my day job which I've had to spend the past few days cleaning up, I have upwards of 150 ACA/Obamacare-related emails clogging up my In Box.
Most of them are worth a mention, but there's no possible way I can do a full entry / commentary / analysis on most of them, so I'm just doing roundup-style summary mentions:
Supreme Court justices have their first chance this week to decide whether they have the appetite for another major fight over President Barack Obama’s health care law.
...The appeal has arrived at the Supreme Court at a curious time; there is no conflicting appeals court ruling that the justices often say is a virtual requirement for them to take on an issue.
NOTE: In light of some serious discussion with IBD's Jed Graham and a lot of thought afterwards, I've decided to run the "attrition" numbers two ways: "Current vs. April Paid" and "Current vs. April Total", for reasons I'll explain soon.
The main thrust of this article is general hand-wringing over how the state of Rhode Island plans on funding their ACA exchange after this year, although it's a bit confusing since it sounds like the problem has nothing to do with having the funding and everything to do with having permission to use it:
Enrollment starts on Nov. 15.
Not long after, the state will have to make its own big decision: how to finance the exchange.
Of the $23.4 million in federal funds budgeted for HealthSource RI this year, only $1,353,570 has been spent so far. The state anticipates — but does not yet have — federal permission to spend any of the remaining dollars after Dec. 31.
However, there's one data point that pops up smack in the middle of my current "mini-project", trying to lock down the current QHP enrollments in each state:
The numbers ranged from as poor as Florida losing 12% of their enrollments in just 2 months to as well as Maryland and Oregon seeing a 30%+ net increase in enrollees over the past 6 months.
Today I can add Kentucky to the latter list. She couldn't provide an exact current count, but according to the woman I spoke with at the kynect exchange (that's "Obamacare", Mitch!), the number of Kentuckians currently enrolled in private policies via kynect is "right around the same number it was at last spring, between 80-85 thousand".
Why has the law been such a flop in a state that had so much to gain from it? When I traveled across Mississippi this summer, from Delta towns to the Tennessee border to the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, what I found was a series of cascading problems: bumbling errors and misinformation; ignorance and disorganization; a haunting racial divide; and, above all, the unyielding ideological imperative of conservative politics. This, I found, was a story about the Tea Party and its influence over a state Republican Party in transition, where a public feud between Governor Phil Bryant and the elected insurance commissioner forced the state to shut down its own insurance marketplace, even as the Obama administration in Washington refused to step into the fray. By the time the federal government offered the required coverage on its balky HealthCare.gov website, 70 percent of Mississippians confessed they knew almost nothing about it. “We would talk to people who say, ‘I don’t want anything about Obamacare. I want the Affordable Care Act,’” remembered Tineciaa Harris, one of the so-called navigators trained to help Mississippians sign up for health care. “And we’d have to explain to them that it’s the same thing.”
OK, this is gonna be difficult for people to see, since the Medicaid spreadsheet is so wide (the link goes directly to the spreadsheet itself, which should help somewhat). First, scroll all the way to the right. Then scroll to the bottom. In the lower-right corner, you'll see the following:
