DENVER — Between Nov.1 and Nov. 29, more than 46,000 Coloradans enrolled in health coverage for 2016, either in private health insurance purchased through the state health insurance Marketplace or in Medicaid, or Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+), according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado® and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
“The steady enrollment gains that we have seen during first month of Open Enrollment are very encouraging,” said Connect for Health Colorado® CEO Kevin Patterson. “But now we have just two short weeks to complete enrollment before December 15 – the deadline for coverage to take effect on January 1. I encourage anyone who has not signed up to do it today. Going to our website to find free, in-person help is a great way to start.”
Whether you are renewing or enrolling for the first time, you must complete enrollment by December 15, to have coverage January 1, and avoid a gap in your coverage. Open Enrollment runs through January 31.
Well, there's two more rather interesting developments to the Risk Corridor mess.
First of all, guess who's proudly claiming responsibility for helping destroy over a dozen businesses and kicking hundreds of thousands of people off of "the plan they like"? Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio has killed ObamaCare
ObamaCare is on life support and we have one senator who we can thank for planning years ahead a way to cripple the fraudulent program: Marco Rubio.
In 2013, Joshua Green, a liberal, recognized the role Marco Rubio played in his so-called “devious plan to kill Obamacare”:
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida will introduce a bill today that represents a new and potentially crippling line of attack against the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
...Rubio’s bill takes a new tack by seeking to abolish “risk corridors,” one of several mechanisms in the law meant to hold down premium costs and entice insurers to participate in the exchanges by ensuring they won’t lose a lot of money if they draw a costlier applicant pool than anticipated. Risk corridors function like Major League Baseball profit-sharing: Insurers who wind up with unexpectedly healthy applicants and lower costs will “pay in” money to the government, which in turn “pays out” to insurers with costlier applicants, thereby stabilizing the nascent market. (snip)
...Once Republicans took over Congress Rubio’s bill passed into law. There would be no bailouts of health insurers. There would be no bailouts for health insurers. Rubio predicted the problems years before others (as he has with all the foreign policy crises) and figured out a way to deal with them. He laid out his plans in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal years ago.
The number of people shopping for medical insurance on the Spanish-language version of HealthCare.gov is lagging behind last year's interest, even as the Obama administration urges Hispanics to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Federal figures released Wednesday show that about 153,000 people used cuidadodesalud.gov during the first three weeks of the current enrollment season for ACA health plans, down from 244,000 during the same period a year ago.
“Openly welcoming a preordained veto, Republicans drove legislation to Senate passage Thursday aimed at crippling two of their favorite targets: President Barack Obama’s health care law and Planned Parenthood,” the AP reports.
“With a House rubber stamp expected in days, the bill would be the first to reach Obama’s desk demolishing his 2010 health care overhaul, one of his proudest domestic achievements, and halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood. Congress has voted dozens of times to repeal or weaken the health law and several times against Planned Parenthood’s funding, but until now Democrats thwarted Republicans from shipping the legislation to the White House.”
DON'T F*CKING TELL ME NEXT YEAR'S ELECTION DOESN'T MATTER. VOTE.
However, there's also some very positive news to report. 5 other major insurers have told UnitedHealthcare to chill out. Enrollments are chugging along nicely (HC.gov should have broken the 2 million mark on Saturday, and nationally we should be up to around 2.6 million). The exchange websites seem to be working smoothly across the board (or at least, if there've been any significant technical problems, I've yet to hear about them).
I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy countless times, but ever since my kid was born, every time I watch something catches my eye which I never noticed (or noticed but didn't think about) before.
So, my 9-year old and I are watching "Return of the Jedi" again today (in anticipation of The Force Awakens, of course). In an early scene in Jabba's palace, Princess Leia is sneaking around at night, in the dark, trying to remain undetected so she can free Han Solo from the Carbonite, right? So what does she immediately do?
She bumps head first into a large wind chime which is inexplicably hanging in the stairwell.
There's a lot of news stories of late about Colorado activists managing to successfully place a statewide initiative on the 2016 ballot which, if successful, would make Colorado the first state to move to a new Single Payer healthcare model.
I haven't written a whole lot about this so far, partly because we're still a year out, partly because I'm swamped with current Open Enrollment Period developments (believe me, I'll have more to say about it after the end of #OE3).
However, there's one meme which keeps coming up in the news which drives me a bit insane:
Hmmmm...over at Investor's Business Daily, Jed Graham looks at HealthCare.Gov's 3rd Weekly Snapshot report from a different angle: If you set aside renewals of current enrollees, how are things looking in terms of new additions?
As I noted in my detailed 2016 OE3 projection breakdown, nationally the HHS Dept. is projecting around 8.1 million renewals, plus around 4.5 million new additions, for a total of roughly 12.6 million QHP selections (expected to then dwindle down to roughly 10.0 million still enrolled/paying by the end of next year. In contrast, I'm more optimistic: I projected around 9.0 million renewals, plus 5.7 million new additions.
Ever since I posted my latest article on the growing Individual Mandate Penalty (again, it's up to $695 per person or 2.5% of household income this year), I've heard the same response from many ACA detractors (and even some supporters): Even with the increase in the mandate penalty (technically, it's called the "Individual Shared Responsibility Payment"), it's still too small for it to make sense economically for most people when compared to the cost of enrolling in a compliant policy.
Even with tax credits, the reasoning goes, even the least-expensive Bronze plan (or Catastrophic for those who qualify) is still more expensive than the mandate tax. Of course, if you pay the penalty, then you're still stuck with absolutely no insurance whatsoever, whereas if you enroll in even a basic Bronze plan, you're at least covered for major medical expenses (ie, the type which can wipe out even a $10K deductible*), while also receiving many basic medical treatments like checkups, immunizations and cancer screenings at no charge or for a nominal co-pay. However, it's true that in some cases, the up front dollars paid are indeed higher for the policy than the fee.
*UPDATE: D'oh! Thanks to Esther Ferington for reminding me that the actual worst-case scenario might not be nearly as bad as this, due to the ACA's limit on total out of pocket maximums. For instance, a single, non-smoking 26-year old in Detroit making $20K/year would have an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,450 no matter how much they rack up in medical expenses. On the one hand, that'd still be a disaster on $20K/year. On the other hand, it's also still a lot better than $10K...not to mention the $100K+ which the expenses might rack up without any insurance at all).
Of course, much of this is subjective and, due to the very nature of insurance itself, inherently relies on unknowns. After all, if you knew for certain that you'll never need any medical treatment whatsoever over the next 12 months, paying anything for health insurance would technically be a waste of money. On the other hand, if you know for certain that you're going to rack up a million dollars in medical expenses next year, pretty much any ACA-compliant policy would still be money well spent. Unfortunately, no one knows one or the other for certain, which is kind of the point of insurance in the first place.
I cannot stress this point enough: I am in no way advocating that anyone NOT enroll. I'm basically just playing Devil's Advocate here as a thinking exercise.
Nearly 25,000 people have enrolled in private qualified health plans (QHP) through Maryland Health Connection for 2016.
As of Nov. 23, 19,675 Marylanders had enrolled in private coverage with some or most of their premium costs next year to be offset by advance tax credits. Another 5,310 enrolled in qualified health plans without tax credits. Nearly 72 percent, or 17,960, were enrolled in SIlver plans.
That's 24,985 QHPs total in 23 days, or 1,086 per day.
In addition, 1,708 people have enrolled in stand-alone dental plans and 5,235 more have enrolled in dental along with health coverage for a total of 6,943 with dental coverage next year.
Also, 87,941 were enrolled in Medicaid since Nov. 1 through Maryland Health Connection.
