A couple of weeks ago I reported that the Washington Healthplan Finder was the one of the first state-based ACA exchanges to announce their own COVID19 Special Enrollment Period to coincide with the federal one being launched via HealthCare.Gov.

At the time, I wrote:

Washington State's appears to be for anyone who'd otherwise be eligible during Open Enrollment, which amounts to the same thing as full Open Enrollment. That means even those who are already enrolled in an ACA exchange plan will be able to switch to a different plan mid-year.

Well, so much for that; the Washington Health Benefit Exchange has issued a new press release ahead of the February 15th COVID SEP launch clarifying who's eligible and who isn't:

New Special Enrollment Period for Health Coverage Opens February 15

Nearly six years ago:

In other words, only about 10% (at most) of those still in the Medicaid Gap could remotely match the GOP's cliche of a "lazy, good-for-nothing layabout" type who's able-bodied, has no serious extenuating circumstances and so forth. The "get off your ass and work!" requirements appear to be nearly as big a waste of time and resources as the infamous "drug testing for welfare recipients" bandwagon which a bunch of states jumped on board over the past few years.

With this press release from AccessHealth CT, 49 states +DC have now announced some sort of 2021 COVID-19 Enrollment Period:

ACCESS HEALTH CT ANNOUNCES A SPECIAL ENROLLMENT PERIOD FOR UNINSURED RESIDENTS DUE TO ONGOING PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

I just received confirmation from Vermont Health Connect that they're joining nearly every other state in offering an official COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period...with a few caveats:

Special Enrollment Period for Uninsured Vermonters Opens February 16, 2021

Waterbury, VT— In alignment with the Federal initiative, the State of Vermont is re-opening a special enrollment period on February 16, 2021 to offer Vermonters who do not currently have health insurance an opportunity to enroll in a qualified health plan and receive premium and cost-sharing assistance, if eligible. Intended to facilitate access to health insurance, the special enrollment period is being implemented in partnership with qualified health plan issuers, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont, MVP Health Care, and Northeast Delta Dental. To enroll, Vermonters should call the Customer Support Center at 1-855-899- 9600 Monday through Friday, 8:00AM – 4:30PM.

An unsurprising but still very welcome development in the Endgame of the ongoing #TexasFoldEm #ACA lawsuit:

NEW: Biden admin tells Supreme Court that ObamaCare remains constitutional even without a tax penalty to enforce the individual mandate—a reversal from Trump admin's position

https://t.co/pjNWCaSgf4

— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) February 10, 2021

Here's the full text of the letter sent to the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court by Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler. It's actually pretty cut & dry for this sort of legal document:

Dear Mr. Harris:

(updated 2/12/21 w/final approximate data from DC & VT)

With a 3-month COVID Enrollment Period about to launch in most states (and already ongoing in a few), this is another good point to take a look at how the official 2021 Open Enrollment Period went on a state-by-state basis.

Note that the table below still, frustratingly, only includes partial data for California and no data at all for New York or Rhode Island. I hope to have final data for several of these soon, but in the meantime this is the best I can do:

This Just In via NJ Governor Murphy and Get Covered New Jersey:

Governor Murphy Announces Health Insurance Signups In New Jersey Surpass Previous Two Years

• Urges Residents to Get Covered During New COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period
• 9.4% Increase in Plan Selections from 2020, Enrollment Remains Open Until May 15

TRENTON – Governor Phil Murphy today announced that health insurance signups through New Jersey’s new state-based marketplace surpassed the Open Enrollment Period for the previous two years in New Jersey. Plan selections for 2021 coverage increased 9.4 percent over last year’s Affordable Care Act Open Enrollment Period, as the state successfully expanded access to health coverage through its new state-based marketplace, Get Covered New Jersey, during its first open enrollment period.

Earlier this evening, the House Ways & Means Committee formally published the markup of nine legislative provisions which, if they all survive the process, will make up roughly half of President Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, aka the American Rescue Plan:

The Ways and Means’ proposals comprise half of the $1.9 trillion Democratic COVID-19 relief package

SPRINGFIELD, MA – Today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA) announced the Committee will consider nine legislative proposals under the budget reconciliation instructions this week as the next step in delivering COVID-19 relief to the American people. Beginning on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. through Friday, February 12, 2021, the Committee will markup proposals spanning from extending unemployment insurance to expanding the child tax credit to delivering another round of direct assistance to struggling Americans.

Just over a month ago, I noticed that the Washington Healthplanfinder was touting the fairly impressive launch of their new "Cascade Care" healthcare plans overall (40% of new enrollees were choosing them!)...but that completely missing from all the praise was any breakout of how many were selecting the Public Option version of "Cascade Care"...likely for a very good reason:

Let's step back a moment: There's actually up to three types of policies being offered depending on the carrier:

• Qualified Health Plans (QHPs)...these are the normal policies which comply with ACA regulations offered by most carriers.
• Cascade (Standard)...these are QHPs which also follow another state law passed last year (see below), and
• Cascade (Select)...these are Standardized QHPs which are also public option plans.

Here's the distinction between Cascade "standard" and Cascade "select":

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.

I've made some more changes:

• Every county except those in Alaska lists the 2020 Biden/Trump partisan lean; Alaska still uses the 2016 Clinton/Trump results. I define a "Swing District" as one where the difference between Biden & Trump was less than 6.0%. FWIW, there's just 188 swing districts (out of over 3,100 total), with around 33.8 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 these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Friday, February 5th, 2021 (click image for high-res version).

Blue = Joe Biden won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District