As I've noted before, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when considering moving to Single Payer healthcare is that at least a half a million people currently work directly for health insurance carriers, plus (I'm guessing) another couple million in directly related services. While I do support moving to SP eventually, any plan which replaces the current private insurance industry would have to also take into account what would happen to those people.
Clinton revives support for health care 'public option'
Hillary Clinton wants to bring back the public option, offering a competing vision to Bernie Sanders’ support for a more progressive health care system.
Clinton's campaign has updated its website to note her continued support for the government-run health plan that was dropped from Obamacare during the law's drafting. The idea was popular among progressives who prefer a single-payer plan -- like the one Bernie Sanders is touting.
...A new version of Clinton’s campaign website suggests she won't try to push the public option through Congress, but instead will work with governors using existing flexibility under Obamacare "to empower states to establish a public option choice." That may be a reference to a waiver program taking effect in 2017 that lets states assert greater control over their health care systems.
If she's serious about this, this could be very interesting indeed.
About 8,000 CT exchange customers didn’t pay first bill
About 8,000 people who signed up for coverage through the Connecticut’s health insurance exchange missed the deadline for their first payment and lost coverage, exchange CEO Jim Wadleigh said Monday.
“This number is bigger than we were anticipating,” Wadleigh said. Just over 116,000 people signed up for private insurance through Access Health CT, the state’s exchange, during the open enrollment period that ended Jan. 31. “The fact that all these customers have not made their first payment was kind of a shock to even us.”
As I noted last week, Your Health Idaho has released their final official OE3 number. I had previously noted that there were only 8 states in which the exchanges appeared to have performed worse on private policy enrollment in 2016 than they did in 2015, and that most of those had special circumstances:
So, last year, after getting a chuckle out someone snapping up TedCruz.com and posting a pro-immigration reform message on it, I snapped up a few other variables which Senator Maple Leaf missed, such as TedCrooz.com, TedCruise.com and so forth. I figured I'd get a handful of visits from people misspelling his name, but I also kind of assumed that those people would instantly realize their error, seeing how the moment the site loads, it's pretty obvious that not only is this not Ted Cruz's campaign website, the whole site is the complete opposite of everything Cruz-ish...especially in regards to the Affordable Care Act.
Apparently I was wrong. It never fails to amaze me how utterly oblivious some people supporters are to the websites they're visiting. Check out the most recent missive I received over the weekend:
Every year, at least since the ACA exchanges went into effect, insurers have been required to submit their plans and premium rates for the upcoming year to state or federal regulators months ahead of time, in order to allow time to review, modify and approve rates. Once Open Enrollment begins, it was my understanding that the specifics of the plans offered are supposed to be locked in for the full calendar year. In other words, no bait & switching allowed: If a certain plan was set to cost someone $300/month with a $2,000 deductible, 70% actuarial value, such-and-such co-pays and so forth, they aren't allowed to change those plan specs once the Open Enrollment Period begins, and they're required to stick to those prices and coverage specifics for the full upcoming year.
For months now, several large insurance carriers (especially the biggest of them, UnitedHealthcare) have been griping about losing money hand over fist on the ACA exchanges, and yes, that's probably true (although other carriers are making money, albeit not as many and not as much as the losses).
That's 300 more people who signed up for QHPs in the first 2 weeks of the off-season, plus another 6,500 added to MinnesotaCare and over 17,000 added to Medicaid (both of which are year round).
The QHP number (just 21 per day) is kind of interesting when compared to Rhode Island, which has has averaged 90 additional people per day in the first 2 weeks of February, yet has a population only 1/5th the size of Minnesota's. When adjusted for total population, Rhode Island's off-season rate is over 21x that of Minnesota.
The big difference, of course, is that Minnesota's BHP program (MinnesotaCare) cannibalizes the QHP market tremendously. When you add those 6,500 to the mix, MNsure has averaged 485 per day...or slightly higher than Rhode Island when adjusted for inflation (around 97/day when divided by 5).
... all young people in Flint the chance to receive publicly funded health care services for lead exposure amid the city's contaminated drinking water crisis.
...The White House and federal Department of Health and Human Services did not have an immediate response Tuesday to Snyder's initiative targeting Flint residents up to age 21 through the expansion of Medicaid.
Specifically, the initiative, which is expected to be sent to the Obama administration in the next week, seeks expanding Medicaid eligibility to those affected regardless of income level. The request would also include the expansion of Medicaid coverage for people already enrolled in other forms of insurance.
Covered California held a press call a few minutes ago in which they released detailed enrollment numbers for the 2016 Open Enrollment Period, broken down a number of different ways, including by rate region and individual carrier market share. They even broke the individual numbers out between renewals and new enrollees.
Unfortunately, I only caught half the call, but the full press release should be coming out momentarily which is supposed to have all of the numbers broken out every which way.
Until then, here are some oddball key points from the call:
