President Joe Biden is set to announce that his administration is expanding eligibility for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the matter.
[In 2017], Virginia residents experienced massive amounts of heartburn and ulcers as two major insurance carriers, Optima (Sentara Health) and Anthem (HealthKeepers) played musical chairs with both their 2018 rate filings and which areas of the state they offered plans on.
In May 2017, things didn't look too bad: Both Anthem and Optima were available in fairly large chunks of the state, and while Anthem wanted to raise rates an ugly 38% on average, Optima was only looking to increase rates by around 10-11%.
Ten years ago, during the very first ACA Open Enrollment Period, Oregon was one of 15 states which attempted to operate their own fully state-based marketplace SBM) under the new law, calling it "Cover Oregon."
Cover Oregon poised to switch to federal insurance exchange
Alex Pettit, the state's top information-technology official, recommended Cover Oregon move to the federal exchange at an advisory committee meeting Thursday.
Oregon should pull the plug on the beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange and switch to the federal exchange, a technological advisory committee recommended Thursday.
The move is considered almost certain to be adopted by the Cover Oregon board, which meets Friday.
The letter I received had the Essential Plan at 250%. My Navigator told me it was a mistake and pending approval? DM me for specifics
This is definitely cause for concern, since New York's Essential Plan is only available to NY residents who earn between 138 - 200% of the Federal Poverty Level ($29,160/yr for a single adult, $60,000/yr for a family of four).
Sure enough, they sent me the full letter they received from New York State of Health (personal info redacted, of course):
Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to strengthen maternal health, an estimated 641,000 Americans annually are now eligible for essential care for a full year after pregnancy.
Completed applications/redeterminations processed through the integrated eligibility system: 7,283
It's my understanding that "Acquisition Summary" refers to CT residents who are brand-new enrollees (never enrolled via the exchange before).
The report was posted this morning so it obviously only includes enrollment data through yesterday (Nov. 9th).
It's worth noting that last year, Access Health CT reported enrolling 10,011 people through Nov. 10th (one extra day since Nov. 1st fell on a Tuesday last year).
OK, there isn't supposed to be a formal Open Enrollment Period report out for another week, but President Biden just tweeted out a pretty impressive topline number for the first week of the 2024 ACA Open Enrollment Period:
In the first week of Open Enrollment, 1.6 million people have signed up for a plan at HealthCare.Gov, including 301,000 new consumers – that’s a 50% increase from last year.
Fourteen health insurers have been approved to sell in Washington's 2024 individual health insurance market. Insurers requested an average increase of 9.11% but 8.94% was approved. How much premium someone pays will depend on the plan they select, the number of people covered, their age, whether or not they smoke and where they live.
New CMS data, quietly released in late August, show about 178,000 consumers chose a qualified health plan (QHP) through a state or federal exchanges after losing Medicaid and CHIP coverage in the first two months of the Medicaid unwinding. Those sign-ups through the end of May are more than three times the 54,000 enrollments that CMS reported in July, which reflected only the April numbers.
West Virginia is yet another state where I'm unable to acquire unredacted actuarial memos and/or filing summaries in order to run weighted average rate changes, so I have to settle for unweighted averages. On the other hand, on the individual market, at least, WV only has three carriers and their requested rate changes for 2024 are in a very narrow range anyway (from flat to a 2.1% increase), so it doesn't matter much.
The good news is that West Virginia's individual market rates are only increasing by around 1% next year, one of the lowest avg. rate increases in the country.
The bad news is that West Virginia already has by far the highest unsubsidized individual market rates in the nation, at nearly $1,200 per month (second highest this year is Wyoming at $965/month).
In any event, small group market carriers are requesting an unweighted average increase of 9.6% overall.
UPDATE 11/08/23: State regulators increased the rate h ikes from 1.1% to 3.0% for CareSource, but otherwise left the other carriers on both markets as is.
