On April 14th, Covered California reported that 58,000 residents had enrolled in ACA exchange coverage during their COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period, of which roughly 20,000 did so via standard SEPs (losing coverage, moving, getting married/divorced, etc), while an additional 38,000 took advantage of the COVID-specific SEP.
The bill in question wasn't terribly complicated; it essentially just placed a new fee on health insurance carriers to finance a new fund which would in turn be used to reduce healthcare coverage costs for low- and middle-income New Mexicans. Furthermore, since some of the fees would be imposed on managed Medicaid programs which are mostly federally funded, it would have leveraged tens of millions of dollars in federal funding as opposed to all of the fees coming from state residents. Had it gone into effect, HB 278 was expected to generate around $125 million in revenue for the state to use to reduce premiums and cost sharing for enrollees.
NEARLY 40,000 MARYLANDERS HAVE ENROLLED DURING CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY SPECIAL ENROLLMENT PERIOD
Less than a week left for uninsured residents to get marketplace coverage
BALTIMORE, MD – The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange today is urging uninsured Marylanders to enroll in coverage before the June 15 deadline through the state’s health insurance marketplace, Maryland Health Connection, under the Coronavirus Emergency Special Enrollment Period. To date, nearly 40,000 residents have received health coverage during this special enrollment period that began in March with Gov. Larry Hogan’s announcement of a State of Emergency in Maryland.
Over a year ago, I wrote an analysis of H.R.1868, the House Democrats bill that comprises the core of the larger H.R.1884 "ACA 2.0" bill. H.R.1884 includes a suite of about a dozen provisions to protect, repair and strengthen the ACA, but the House Dems also broke the larger piece of legislation down into a dozen smaller bills as well.
Some of these "mini-ACA 2.0" bills only make minor improvements to the law, or make improvements in ways which are important but would take a few years to see obvious results. Others, however, make huge improvements and would be immediately obvious, and of those, the single most dramatic and important one is H.R.1868.
The official title is the "Health Care Affordability Act of 2019", but I just call both it and H.R.1884 (the "Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019") by the much simpler and more accurate moniker "ACA 2.0".
Health Carriers Propose Affordable Care Act (ACA) Premium Rates for 2021
BALTIMORE – Health carriers are seeking a range of changes to the premium rates they will charge consumers for plans sold in Maryland’s Individual Non-Medigap (INM) and Small Group (SG) markets in 2021.
The rates submitted for the INM market include the estimated impacts from the state-based reinsurance program (SBRP) enacted in 2019 via a 1332 State Innovation Waiver, approved by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
“As CEO of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, I have been saddened and horrified by the brutal death of George Floyd while in police custody. His death represents one of the most recent in a long history of violence against black people, including Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others. As communities across the state and the nation voice their justified anger and frustration, we stand with the Black community and all communities of color. This tragic event reminds our leadership and staff of the urgent need to continue to address structural racism as a way to narrow health disparities, especially in communities of color.
“We, too, are deeply concerned about the property damage taking place in our cities. It is harmful to so many people, including the communities who are working to make their voice heard. We choose to focus on the protestors’ message of racial justice over the damage being committed by a disorganized few, because property is replaceable and Black lives are not.
Now that I've brought all 50 states (+DC & the U.S. territories) up to date, I'm going to be posting a weekly ranking of the 40 U.S. counties (or county equivalents) with the highest per capita official COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
Again, I've separates the states into two separate spreadsheets:
Most of the data comes from either the GitHub data repositories of either Johns Hopkins University or the New York Times. Some of the data comes directly from state health department websites.
Here's the top 40 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, June 6th:
New York is the fifth state (well, fourth really) to announce their preliminary 2021 health insurance policy premium rate changes for the individual and small group markets (thanks to Michael Capaldo for the heads up):
NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF FINANCIAL SERVICES
2021 INDIVIDUAL AND SMALL GROUP REQUESTED RATE ACTIONS
6/5/2020
Health insurers in New York have submitted their requested rates for 2021, as set forth in the charts below. These are the rates proposed by health insurers, and have not been approved by DFS.
At long last, after many hours of data entry, here it is: The spread of COVID-19 across all 50 states over time, from March 20th through June 3rd, 2020, in official cases per capita.
I decided to only use every 3rd day (3/20, 3/23, 3/26, etc) in order to avoid as many one-day data reporting issues as possible (i.e., there were some cases where a state didn't update their numbers for 2 days in a row). I also gave up trying to tie every trend line to the state name; it simply gets too crowded near the bottom even with a small font size, so I've grouped some of them together where necessary.
I still hope to add the District of Columbia and U.S. territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, etc) but otherwise I should have everything fully up to date now, and should only have to plug in one day at a time going forward. I'll update this chart once a week if possible.
