The Supreme Court on Wednesday listed a closely watched case seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act for discussion at the justices’ private conference on Feb. 21.
The justices will consider whether to take up the case and on what schedule.
There is at least some possibility they could decide to take the case this term, meaning a ruling would be issued by June. But most observers expect a ruling will not come until after the 2020 election, either because the court waits until the next term to hear it, or because it decides not to take up the case at all until lower courts have finished considering it.
I couldn't stomach watching most of Trump's Hate Rally Lie Fest State of the Union last night, but I did catch the healthcare portion. As usual, Trump blatantly lied through his teeth about almost everything, which is pretty standard these days. Still, I figured I should go through them point by point:
A good life for American families also requires the most affordable, innovative, and high-quality health system on Earth. I moved quickly to provide affordable alternatives. Our new plans are up to 60% less expensive, and better.
OK, technically I'm officially a published author of half of one chapter of an academic textbook.
Nearly two years ago I was contacted by an online friend of mine, Gordon Herz, PhD of Forward Psychology Group, LLC, asking whether I'd be interested in co-authoring a chapter for an academic text being published by Oxford University Press. I'd never done anything like this before, but decided to give it a shot, and after some revisions and editing, voila, here it is:
This is very interesting. ACA Open Enrollment deadline extensions have become kind of a running joke over the years, but for the most part they've been restricted to the December deadlines. the states with deadlines already extending into January have stuck with them for the most part...until this year.
A few days ago, New York State of Health announced that they're extending their final enrollment deadline (for March 1st coverage) by a week, until midnight on Friday, February 7th.
As I noted a few days ago, I spent most of last week in Washington, DC attending the Families USA healthcare policy conference and meeting with staffers for a dozen or so House Democrats. My main goal in those meetings was to encourage as many House members as possible to sign on as cosponsors of what I've termed the "ACA 2.0" bills.
Until my meetings, H.R. 1868 had 36 cosponsors including the lead sponsor, Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois...and hadn't had any new cosponsors sign on since October. H.R. 1884, meanwhile, had 160 cosponsors including the lead sponsor, Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey...but hadn't had anyone sign on since last August.
California and New York have both released updated 2020 Open Enrollment numbers, so I figured I'd update my spreadsheet one more time before the final data is released. This time I've included a smaller secondary table at the bottom which adjusts the Federal and State-based exchange numbers for Nevada.
OFFICIALLY, HealthCare.Gov enrollment is down nearly 128,000 people this year, but that's not fair because Nevada broke off of HC.gov onto their own full state-based exchange platform this year. When you adjust for that, HC.gov is only down 119,000 people for the remaining 38 states. Meanwhile, the state-based exchanges are officially down 2,900 at the moment, but again, with Nevada joining them, they're actually down around 8,900.people.
That leaves the missing enrollment data from five states. Rhode Island and Vermont haven't released any data...I'm assuming they'll both be very close to last year (call it at least 33,000 and 24,000 respectively). I'm assuming New York + DC will be good for perhaps 3,000 more enrollees combined in their final days. And California will likely tack on another 30,000 or so in their final 2 days of Open Enrollment.
With one day left to go before the 2020 ACA Open Enrollment Period wraps up in California, the largest state ACA exchange in the country issued one more update and call to action:
Covered California Sees Thousands of People Enroll Each Day as it Approaches Friday’s Final Day of Open Enrollment
More than 364,000 consumers have newly enrolled during the current open-enrollment period, which ends at midnight on Friday, Jan. 31
More than 33,000 people have enrolled since Monday, an average of more than 11,000 people per day.
California passed two new laws for 2020, one that requires Californians to have health insurance or face a penalty, while the other offers new financial help – for the first time – to eligible consumers purchasing coverage.
Open enrollment is the one time when people can sign up for health insurance in the individual market without needing a qualifying life event.
Trump administration finalizing Medicaid block grant plan targeting Obamacare
The plan is guaranteed to enrage critics and invite attacks from Democrats in an election year.
The Trump administration is finalizing a plan to let states convert a chunk of Medicaid funding to block grants, even as officials remain divided over how to sell the controversial change to the safety net health program.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma plans to issue a letter soon explaining how states could seek waivers to receive defined payments for adults covered by Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, according to seven people with knowledge of the closely guarded effort. An announcement is tentatively slated for the end of next week, more than one year after Verma and her team began developing the plan.
Fact Sheet:: What you Need to Know About the New Federal Public Charge Rule and Health Insurance
Updated 1/29/20
When does the new Public Charge rule go into effect?
The Supreme Court decided on January 27, 2020, to allow the rule to take effect.
Does enrolling in free or low-cost health insurance make me a Public Charge?
Most health insurance coverage is not a factor in the new Public Charge test. Only federally-funded Medicaid is included, and even for this program there are several exempt groups of people who are excluded under the rule, including pregnant women and children under 21. Additionally, asylees, refugees, and visa holders who are victims of trafficking and other crimes, among others, are entirely exempt from the Public Charge rule.
The following programs are not included in the Public Charge rule:
Last March 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".
