When I last checked in on Pennsylvania's year-late-but-certainly-welcome addition to the ACA Medicaid expansion club, newly inaugurated Governor Tom Wolf was in the process of replacing his predecessor's poorly-conceived, overly-complicated "Conservative version" of the expansion program with "official" Medicaid expansion to up to 600,000 state residents. At the time (early May), they had hit roughly 250,000 people.
I'm happy to report that according to today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the dust has settled on the transition, and enrollment has been on a tear, with the tally now standing at roughly 439,000 Pennsylvanians.
About 439,000 Pennsylvanians have enrolled in expanded Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage to the poor and disabled, since the beginning of the year, according to figures released last week by the state’s Department of Human Services.
Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account
..and the wording of the passage was changed to this:
"...into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state."
Japanese holdouts (残留日本兵 Zanryū nipponhei?, "remaining Japanese soldiers") or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan ending World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles, or simply were not aware of it because communications had been cut off by the United States island hopping campaign.
They continued to fight the enemy forces, and later local police, for years after the war was over. Some Japanese holdouts volunteered during the First Indochina War and Indonesian War of Independence, to free Asian colonies from Western control despite these having once been colonial ambitions of Imperial Japan during World War II.
Over the past couple of months, the proposed 2016 individual & small business market premium rate filings have mostly been released. These are requests only, and have yet to be approved by state regulators in most states (Oregon and Kentucky are the only ones I know of which have actually approved theirs so far), but it at least gives us a general idea of where things are likely to stand next year.
News Alert – July 23, 2015
Individual/Consumer Markets
What to Expect for 2106 Open Enrollment Plans
On Monday, the Texas Department of Insurance gave Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) the clearance to announce a change in retail product offerings for 2016. We wanted to share this information with you first.
...There are some changes in the plans we intend to offer in 2016. Most significantly, we won’t be offering our Blue Choice PPO insurance plans for our under 65 block of business going forward.
We intend to offer other products, on and off the Marketplace. A new product has been filed that we believe will give you a flexible choice for your clients. We will be able to share information about that product if and when it is approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) closer to open enrollment.
...Currently, we have about 367,000 individual Texas members who will have their PPO plan discontinued in 2016. This number fluctuates monthly.
Hawaii Health Connector offers individual plans from two carriers: BCBS’s Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), and Kaiser Permanente.
For 2016, HMSA has proposed a 45.5 percent rate increase for their individual HMO plan, and nearly a 50 percent rate hike for their individual PPO plan (49.1 percent overall). The carrier justified their rate hikes based on claims costs, explaining that while virtually everyone in Hawaii was already insured, the uninsured pool – many of whom purchased new ACA-compliant plans – had significant medical needs.
Ouch. Yup, that's a pretty ugly requested increase, no way around it.
The following day, Kaiser proposed an 8.7 percent rate increase for their individual market policies.
Once again, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is proving its critics wrong. Opponents of the ACA, or Obamacare, have been falling all over themselves proclaiming that an influx of new patients will overburden the healthcare system, creating a dire doctor shortage.
At least in Michigan, that’s proven to be absolutely false.
A new University of Michigan study shows that the availability of primary care appointments actually improved for people with Medicaid in the first months after the state launched the Healthy Michigan Plan, the state’s Medicaid expansion under the ACA. What’s more, it remained mostly unchanged for those with private insurance.
At the end of May, I noted some very promising news out of the Nutmeg State: Out of the 111,268 people (109,839 during Open Enrollment + another 1,429 during the #ACATaxTime SEP) who had selected a private policy via AccessHealthCT as of last spring, around 93% were still enrolled in effectuated coverage, which is fantastic considering that last year, 12% of those who selected QHPs didn't pay in the first place, aside from any additional net attrition which happened after the first month.
Well, it's mid-July now, and the AccessHealthCT board just had their monthly meeting at which they gave a bunch of solid updates. Thanks to Arielle Levin Becker for most of the Tweetstorm:
There are a total of 608,231 processed applications. 96,966 CT residents are insured in a Qualified Health Plan (QHP). #AHCTBoDMeeting
