CMS Approves 12-month Extension of Postpartum Coverage in Washington State
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), approved Washington state’s extension of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage for 12 months after pregnancy. As a result, up to an additional 12,000 people annually will now have access to Medicaid or CHIP coverage for a full year after pregnancy. With today’s approval, an estimated 265,000 Americans annually in 15 states and D.C. have gained access to 12 months of postpartum coverage.
Access Health CT Announces Special Enrollment Period For Covered Connecticut Program
Eligible Connecticut residents have until June 30 to enroll
HARTFORD, Conn. (Feb. 15, 2022) — Access Health CT (AHCT) today announced a Special Enrollment Period for the Covered Connecticut Program that provides health insurance at no cost to Connecticut residents who meet eligibility requirements. This Special Enrollment Period runs now through June 30.
Created and funded by the State of Connecticut, the Covered Connecticut Program pays the customer’s portion of the monthly payment (premium) directly to their insurance company. The program also covers the cost-sharing amounts they would typically have to pay with a health insurance plan, such as co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles and maximum out-of-pocket costs.
The looming disaster on Obamacare subsidies keeps looking worse
Congressional Democrats are confronting a ticking time bomb that threatens both the health security of millions of Americans and Democrats’ own political security in the midterm elections. If they don’t act fast, it’s going to explode.
...Now, another group of Democrats outside Washington is getting increasingly nervous about this prospect. Democratic governors, many of whom are up for reelection this year, don’t want to watch while Congress makes life more difficult for their constituents.
Underscoring the point, a group of Democratic governors has released a new letter imploring congressional leaders to extend the enhanced subsidies.
Insurers File Proposed Rates for 2023 District of Columbia Health Plan Offerings
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Washington – The District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (DISB) has received 208 proposed health insurance plan rates for annual review in advance of open enrollment for plan year 2023. The proposed rates were submitted for DC Health Link, the District of Columbia’s health insurance marketplace, from Aetna, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Kaiser Permanente and United Healthcare.
The proposed rates are for individuals, families and small businesses for the 2023 plan year. Overall, the number of plans submitted for 2022 is up by 51 from those submitted for 2022.
Today, Secretaries Xavier Becerra, Marty Walsh, and Janet L. Yellen of the U.S. Departments of Health & Human Services, Labor and Treasury (Departments), respectively, issued a letter to group health plans and health insurance issuers reminding them of their obligations under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide coverage for contraceptive services at no cost.
In all fifty states, the ACA guarantees coverage of women’s preventive services, including free birth control and contraceptive counseling, for individuals and covered dependents. Recent reports have shown that some issuers and plans may not be appropriately providing this coverage. The letter is another step for the Departments to put the industry on notice for the required coverage and demand prompt action to ensure that people can rightfully access the birth control they need.
I have little to add to the discussion this morning, so I'll just repost this tweet by a Wall St. Journal health reporter:
Almost half the states have laws in place or at the ready to curtail or outlaw abortion, including 13 states with trigger laws in place that will ban it immediately.
Once again, here's what the Affordable Care Act's premium subsidy tables look like under the original ACA itself and under the American Rescue Plan (ARP). The premium caps are the maximum percent of household income which a household has to pay for the benchmark Silver plan at various income ranges.
The ARP table is currently scheduled to sunset at the end of December, at which point, without legislation passing Congress & being signed into law by President Biden, it will revert back to the original ACA subsidy table:
(sigh) The Sword of Damocles continues to dangle over the head of the Affordable Care Act. This time it isn't about an existential threat to the PPACA, at least...but the expanded/enhanced subsidies which were put into place temporarily by the American Rescue Plan (ARP) are definitely at risk.
Conversations are underway between Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer to negotiate a budget reconciliation bill, which would require only a simple majority for passage, that would meet Manchin’s demands without losing support from other Democrats.
...Another Manchin condition is that the measure avoid any “cliffs” that sunset new programs early to keep the price tag down, something Manchin argues artificially hides the true costs since programs will prove too popular not to extend.
No, this is not a repeat, though it may sound like it. From March:
Since the collapse of the Build Back Better Act in the U.S. Senate last December (reminder: It passed the House but came to a screeching halt when all 50 Republican Senators along with conservative Democrat Joe Manchin refused to support it), Congressional Democrats have been quietly trying to put at least some of the pieces of the bill back together in an attempt to salvage something out of President Biden's signature social spending agenda.
...One of the other provisions of BBB which some members of Congress are trying to save has been reintroduced as a standalone bill in both the House (H.R. 6833) and Senate (S.3700), the Affordable Insulin Now Act.
