Pam MacEwan, CEO Washington Health Benefit Exchange (Exchange), issued the following statement today after the signing of Cascade Care 2.0 into state law:
“Today’s signing of the Cascade Care 2.0 bill sets the stage to improve the quality, availability, and affordability of the health plans offered through Washington Healthplanfinder.
“This bill establishes a state premium assistance program that will benefit over 100,000 low-income Washingtonians struggling to pay for health insurance; increases statewide availability of the state’s first-in-nation public option program; and builds on the success of the high-quality Cascade Care standard plans – that have created average savings of $1,000 in out-of-pocket costs.
Exclusive: Official 2021 #ACA Open Enrollment Period Hits 12.0 Million QHPs For First Time Since 2017
At the time I only had estimated 2021 Open Enrollment Period (OEP) data for several states, but my estimate was confirmed a couple of weeks ago when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the official 2021 OEP report, which states that the official total number of ACA Qualified Health Plan (QHP) selections for 2021 was 12,004,365 people.
But more than two in five Republicans said they would avoid getting vaccinated if possible, suggesting that President Biden has not succeeded in his effort to depoliticize the vaccines — and leaving open the question of whether the country will be able to achieve herd immunity without a stronger push from Republican leaders to bring their voters on board.
I ran these numbers last month in my write-up speculating about the prospect of Democrats and the Biden Administration effectively "federalizing" ACA Medicaid expansion altogether by raising the FMAP threshold from 90% to 100%, but it's worth a standalone blog post as well.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that nearly 2.2 million Americans currently fall into the "Medicaid Gap" in the 12 states which haven't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act yet. They also estimate that another 1.8 million uninsured Americans are eligible for subsidized ACA exchange plans who would be eligible for Medicaid instead if those state actually did expand Medicaid. That's nearly 4.0 million total.
As I noted recently, I've relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.
I've done my best to label every state/territory, which obviously isn't easy to do for most of them given how tangled it gets in the middle.
NOTE: I've recently updated the spreadsheet to account for the official 2020 Census Bureau populations of every state. In most cases this has nudged their case & mortality rates down slightly.
Nearly 1 out of every 7 residents of North Dakota, South Dakota and Rhode Island have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.
More than 1 out of every 9 residents of Iowa, Tennessee, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Arkansas.
More than 1 out of 10 in New Jersey, Indiana, Delaware, Mississippi, Kansas, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, New York, Georgia, Idaho, Wisconsin, Nevada, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana and Texas.
More than 1 out of 20 in every state & territory EXCEPT Guam, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, N. Mariana Islands & American Samoa.
A few days ago, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted an updated report on the number of Americans who have selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through HealthCare.Gov, which hosts ACA enrollment for 36 states during the ongoing COVID Special Enrollment Period (SEP) which began on February 15th and is set to continue through August 15th in most states.
In addition to the 940,000 QHPs via the federal exchange (HC.gov) from 2/15 through 4/30, I've compiled officlal SEP enrollment numbers for several of the states which operate their own ACA exchanges as well:
Colorado: 17,282 from 2/08 - 5/05
Connecticut: 5,890 from 2/15 - 4/15
Idaho: 3,600 from 3/01 - 3/31
Maryland: 15,150 from 1/01 - 2/28
Minnesota: 2,285 from 2/16 - 3/09
Nevada: 6,908 from 2/15 - 5/06
Pennsylvania: 11,126 from 2/15 - 3/25
Washington: 1,700 from 2/15 - 2/23
The total of these, plus the 940,000 via HC.gov, comes to 1,003,516 confirmed so far.
There's no formal press release yet, but I've confirmed that the Nevada Health Link ACA exchange has enrolled 6,908 additional Nevadans in ACA exchange coverage via the COVID Special Enrollment Period as of yesterday (5/06) so far.
This breaks out to around 85 per day from 2/15 - 5/06.
Unfortunately, I don't have Nevada's 2019 or 2020 SEP enrollment handy for comparison, but NV's statewide population (3.10) is right in between Arkansas (3.03 million) and Iowa (3.19 million), which at least allows for a rough comparison:
This strongly suggests that Nevada's 85/day average is perhap 2.5x higher than 2019 and perhaps twice as high as 2020, although 2020 is a fuzzier comparison since HC.gov didn't have a COVID SEP last year while the Nevada Health Link did.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except for Utah, which comes from the GitHub data of the New York Times due to JHU not breaking the state out by county but by "region" for some reason.
Important:
Every county except those in Alaska lists the 2020 Biden/Trump partisan lean; Alaska still uses the 2016 Clinton/Trump results (the 2020 Alaska results are only available by state legislative district, not by county/borough for some reason...if anyone has that info let me know)
I define a "Swing District" as one where the difference between Biden & Trump was less than 6.0%. FWIW, there's just 187 swing districts (out of over 3,100 total), with around 33.7 million Americans out of 332 million total, or roughly 10.2% of the U.S. population.
For the U.S. territories, Puerto Rico only includes the case breakout, not deaths, which are unavailable by county equivalent for some reason.
With those caveats in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, May 6th, 2021 (click image for high-res version).
Blue = Joe Biden won by more than 6 points
Orange = Donald Trumpwon by more than 6 points
Yellow = Swing District (Biden or Trump won by less than 6 points)
DENVER — 17,282 Coloradans have signed up for a health insurance plan since Connect for Health Colorado re-opened enrollment on Feb. 8, with more than 7,500 sign ups in the last month alone. That uptick in enrollments coincides with the date that Connect for Health Colorado began offering increased savings on health insurance to residents of all income ranges following the passage of the American Rescue Plan.
Hmmm...I know they say "7,500 in the past month", but they reported 9,971 as of 4/07, so that should mean 7,311 in the past month. Huh.
