Commencement speakers will remind thousands of new graduates that “life can change in an instant” – making it important for them to have health coverage, so they can get the health care they need as they set out in life.
A new video distributed on social platforms will remind graduates who may be losing their health coverage to check out Covered California for affordable options.
Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee congratulates graduates and reminds them to protect their futures by getting health insurance.
Covered California provided more than 70 campus health centers with materials to educate graduating students about new health insurance options available through Covered California
The “special enrollment” campaign for graduates is launching amid new data showing California’s uninsured rate is at an all-time low.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Graduation season is in full bloom and Covered California is joining with commencement speakers throughout the state to remind the over 400,000 graduates and their families not to forget about the importance of health insurance during this busy time of year.
Eleven health insurers file for 2019 individual market: No bare counties
May 25, 2018
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Eleven health insurers filed 88 health plans for Washington state’s individual market yesterday, and all 39 counties will be covered in 2019.
The proposed rate changes are not public until 10 days after the OIC has determined the filings are complete. Release of the proposed rate changes is targeted for June 4.
“We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing consumers in every county who need coverage will have access to a health plan in 2019,” said Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler. “Obviously, how much premiums may change and any increases to out-of-pocket costs are still key concerns, but I’m grateful that we can assure people that coverage is available, regardless of where they live.”
Establish a robust reinsurance program to significantly lower insurance premiums for individual market enrollees,
Protect people from out-of-network "balance billing", and
Cancel out Trump's expansion of "Association Health Plans"
(New Jersey actually already had several other "ACA protection" laws on the books in the first place, including protections against short-term plans and "surprise billing".)
In addition, new Governor Phil Murphy had alread proven that he understands and supports the ACA; within days of taking office he had already issued an executive order telling all state agencies to do everything they reasonably can to inform the public about how to enroll during Open Enrollment and so forth.
On another note, I also want to use this as an opportunity to point out that maintaining quality health insurance coverage needs to be a priority year in and year out. Jenks notes that "Pregnancies are often unplanned, making limited enrollment periods impractical for many women." But can't that be said of any medical condition? In fact, I would say pregnancy is one aspect of healthcare that's probably much more likely to actually be planned. While about half of pregnancies are planned, I doubt the same could be said for cancers, heart attacks, or car accidents.
In other words, while not all pregnancies are planned, overall it's a lot less "random" than most other expensive healthcare incidents.
Sen. Mike SHIRKEY (R-ClarkLake) said today he's hammered out an agreement with the administration and the House on creating work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
Speaking during a taping of "Off The Record," Shirkey said, "We have a deal." All sides have signed off on the exemptions to the work requirement, but he didn't get into all fo them pending a formal announcement coming as soon as later this week.
From the wording of this, it sounds an awful lot like "all sides" appears to refer to Republican Senator Shirkey, the rest of the Republican State Senate, the Republican State House and the Republican Governor.
Shirkey confirmed that the 29-hour job requirement in the Senate bill has been pared back to 20 to which he says, "I was hoping Michigan could take a leadership position and set a new standard for that." But rather than jeopardize the entire package, he compromised.
Kris Haltmeyer, a vice president at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, told reporters that the premium increases were in part due to the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate in the Republican tax reform bill in December...“With the repeal of the individual mandate and the failure of Congress to enact stabilization legislation, we are expecting premiums to go up substantially,” Haltmeyer said.
...He said the premium increases are “related to the loss of the mandate and then underlying medical costs.”
“Those two things have the most impact on the rate increases,” he added.
...Oh, and what comes after mandate repeal and underlying medical costs? You guessed it: #ShortAssPlans
One of the things Ford had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day’, 'You’re very tall’, or 'You seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?’
--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A top insurance industry official said Wednesday that he expects “substantial” ObamaCare premium increases for 2019.
Kris Haltmeyer, a vice president at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, told reporters that the premium increases were in part due to the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate in the Republican tax reform bill in December. He also cited lawmakers’ failure to pass a bill aimed at lowering premiums, which fell apart earlier this year amid a partisan dispute over abortion restrictions.
It's become a tradition that every spring/summer/fall, I pore over the official SERFF database for every state, furiously searching for the ACA-compliant rate filings for the upcoming year.
The thing is, the SERFF database, in addition to being somewhat confusing and clunky to work with, includes a lot more than just "here's how much we want to raise our rates next year". Even after narrowing it down to just major medical health insurance policies, there are often still dozens of different forms and spreadsheets in the database, covering pretty much any change to any insurance policy for any carrier. If a carrier drops out of a market, there are forms. If they stop offering PPOs, there are forms. If they merge with or buy out another company, there are obviously forms. Even for the rate filings themselves, there are often a dozen or more different PDFs and/or spreadsheets included as supporting documentation.
The stage is set for a showdown in the Virginia Senate on Tuesday over a budget compromise negotiated by Senate Finance Co-Chairman Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, and House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, to expand the state’s Medicaid program and pay for the state’s share through a new tax on hospital revenues that also would boost Medicaid payments for inpatient provider care.
This evening brought three major pieces of ACA-related news out of three different states:
First, in California, the State Senate passed SB-910, which wouldn't just limit short-term plans, but would outright prohibit them altogether. To my knowledge, CA would be the only state* where STPs wouldn't be allowed at all:
(*Correction: It turns out that New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts also ban Short-Term Plans as well, although according to Dania Palanker of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, California would be the first state to explicitly outlaw short-term plans as opposed to simply stating that all policies have to meet certain standards.)
SACRAMENTO – Today, the State Senate approved passage of Senate Bill 910, which prohibits the sale of short term limited duration health insurance in California.
