Over 2,200 Minnesotans have signed up for health coverage through MNsure's special enrollment period so far
Special enrollment runs through May 17
ST. PAUL, Minn.—2,285 Minnesotans have signed up for private health insurance coverage since the start of MNsure's special enrollment period on February 16. This three-month special enrollment period, which runs through Monday, May 17, is available to any Minnesotan who is uninsured or who is not currently enrolled in a qualified health plan through MNsure.
Minnesotans who want coverage to start on April 1 must enroll by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, March 31. Plans selected during the month of April will have an effective date of May 1, and plans selected by the May 17 deadline will have an effective date of June 1.
In early February, I posted a deep dive into HR 369, the Health Care Affordability Act, and how it would reduce net ACA premiums by permanently eliminating the income "subsidy eligibility cliff" (#KillTheCliff) and making the underlying subsidy formula more generous for all enrollees (#UpTheSubs).
I'm re-posting an updated, modified version of this analysis for two reasons:
First, because HR 1319, the American Rescue Plan, is about to actually pass and be signed into law, with a slightly different formula from HR 369 embedded within it (if only for two years).
Second, because my earlier analysis also threw in two other subsidy enhancement tables which confused the issue (California's state-based subsidies, and the predecessor to HR 369, both of which are/were less generous)
In this version I'm using the actual Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) table under the American Rescue Plan, and I'm cutting out all references to the other two tables to avoid confusion.
Nearly every state (+DC) has re-opened enrollment on their respective ACA exchanges in response to both the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the American Rescue Plan (ARP), which substantially expands and enhances premium subsidies to millions of people!
If you've never enrolled in an ACA healthcare policy before, or if you looked into it years ago but weren't impressed, please give it another shot now. Thanks to the ARP (and some other reasons), it's a whole different ballgame this spring & summer.
Here's 10 important things to understand when you #GetCovered:
In previous years, New York State of Health has typically been pretty good about providing timely Open Enrollment reports, so I was mildly irritated by their total radio silence on the issue throughout the 2021 Open Enrollment Period (OEP).
My suspicion was that, like many other states which have expanded Medicaid, New York likely saw a significant drop in on-exchange Qualified Health Plan (QHP) enrollment this season due to the massive job & income loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic last year, as people "downshifted" from QHPs over to Medicaid. In addition, New York is one of only two states which has the ACA's Basic Health Program (BHP) in place; BHP (called the Essential Plan in NY), is sandwiched in between QHPs and Medicaid, for residents earning between 138 - 200% FPL.
I just received the following COVID Enrollment Period update from Pennie, Pennsylvania's new state-based ACA exchange. This appears to be part of an official report which they're still working on.
The "Existing" numbers refer to current Pennie enrollees who are taking advantage of the COVID SEP to switch to a different plan mid-year; this is something which usually isn't allowed, even during traditional Special Enrollment Periods (SEPs), but Pennie, along with HealthCare.Gov and many of the other state-based exchanges, are allowing them to do so during this period.
There's an obvious reason for this, too: The impending passage of the American Rescue Plan will mean dramatically improved/expanded subsidies for ACA enrollees, including many who haven't been eligible for them until now. This means millions of Americans who enrolled in Bronze plans because they weren't eligible for subsidies will be able to upgrade to Silver or Gold; it also means many people will become eligible for $0-premium plans who currently aren't, and so on.
If you look at the actual legislative text of the final version of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or simply ACA), the table describing the applicable maximum percentage of income that exchange-based enrollees have to pay for their premiums looks like the table below:
(Notably missing is the lower-bound 100% FPL subsidy eligibility cut-off; there's a separate section of the law which notes the 100% threshold but makes an exception for certain lawfully-present immigrants who earn less than 100% FPL but who aren't eligible for Medicaid for various reasons and are given an exception).
One Month In, More Than 4,000 Coloradans Sign Up During Exchange's Uninsured Enrollment Period
DENVER – 4,683 previously uninsured Coloradans signed up for a 2021 health insurance plan through Colorado’s Exchange between Monday, February 8 and the end of day Friday, March 5. That’s more than 1,000 new medical enrollments each week during the first month of Colorado’s Uninsured Enrollment Period.
That's an average of 180/day over 26 days for Colorado. I don't know exactly how many Special Enrollment Period (SEP) enrollees they had during the same time period in prior years, but I can estimate based on their monthly dashboards:
In the face of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden reopened enrollment in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges.
For Nevadans, that means the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange is back in business.
The exchange connects Nevadans to health plans compliant with the Affordable Care Act, and it’s the only place consumers can access any federal subsidies.
“As soon as Nevada learned of the news from the federal government, we took immediate action to plan and collaborate with our insurance carriers and the statewide network of 750-plus brokers and navigators to implement a seamless, streamlined process for Nevadans,” said Heather Korbulic, executive director of Silver State Health Insurance Exchange.
Korbulic told KNPR's State of Nevada that there has already been a lot of interest from people around the state.
"We're pretty excited about the uptake that we've already started seeing and we think this is a wonderful opportunity for Nevadans to get connected to Nevada HealthLink," she said.
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 Friday, March 5th, 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)
