I was out of town for much of last week (my son's robotics team made it to the state championship) so I'm afraid I'm playing a bit of catch up today, so I kind of missed out on writing about this development which, while expected, is both depressing and enraging. Via the NY Times:
A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion is legal, not just in those trying to restrict it.
The drug will continue to be available at least in the short-term since the judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, stayed his own order for seven days to give the F.D.A. time to ask an appeals court to intervene.
Less than an hour after Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, a judge in Washington state issued a ruling in another case, which contradicted the Texas decision, ordering the F.D.A. to make no changes to the availability of mifepristone in the 18 states that filed that lawsuit.
Consumer Advisory: Maryland-issued health insurance policies are not impacted by Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Becerra; preventative services, including PrEP, are still required to be covered
BALTIMORE – Health insurance policies (including HMO plans) issued in Maryland are not impacted by a recent ruling by a federal judge in Texas that health plans do not have to cover certain preventive services.
...Well, just one day after the Bright Healthcare bombshell news broke, Texas-based health insurance broker Jenny Chumbley Hogue sounded the alarm on another large carrier bailing on Texas next year:
While numerous other states have already done the same thing (and several more are in the process of doing so as well), Georgia's move to their own enrollment platform was especially noteworthy for two reasons:
First, because it represents as complete 180-degree turn from their prior attempts (over the course of several years) to eliminate any formal ACA exchange (federal or state-based) in favor of outsourcing it to private insurance carriers & 3rd-party web brokers.
Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Cynthia Cox posted a thread on Twitter yesterday which gives an brief overview of which of the preventative services required to be covered at no cost to the enrollee by the Affordable Care Act are actually threatened by yesterday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor.
If this was any other state besides Georgia--even any other GOP-controlled state--I'd say good for them since it would presumably just mean that they were the latest state to move to their own state-based exchange (which is how the ACA was originally envisioned anyway).
This would give them the ability to hook the SBM into their state databases for auto-enrolling residents receiving SNAP benefits/etc into $0-premium coverage, or to integrate supplemental subsidies as nearly a dozen states do today, and so forth. There's several upsides to moving to an SBM, up to & including reducing the user fees (although those have been significantly reduced on the federal exchange in recent years anyway).
Idaho already has some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books, with nearly all abortions banned in the state and an affirmative defense law that essentially asserts any doctor who provides an abortion is guilty until proven innocent. And now Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.
More than 56,000 customers were impacted by the DC Health Link data breach, the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority revealed Friday.
The data fields compromised were name, Social Security number, birthdate, gender, health plan information, employer information and enrollee information – address, email, phone number, race, ethnicity and citizenship status.
Some 11,000 of the exchange’s more than 100,000 participants work in the House and Senate — in the nation's capital and district offices across the nation — or are relatives.
Agencies share plan to address HUSKY Health eligibility, redeterminations and enrollment actions
HARTFORD, CT (March 27, 2023) — The Department of Social Services (DSS) and Access Health CT (AHCT) today shared a comprehensive 12-month operational and outreach plan to redetermine eligibility for HUSKY Health enrollees and resume routine public program operations. HUSKY Health is Connecticut’s Medicaid program.
Prior to the pandemic, annual redeterminations of eligibility for the Medicaid program occurred on a monthly basis during the year and terminations were processed for individuals no longer eligible for the program. During the pandemic, the termination process was paused. The federal government passed legislation, known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, that now requires the monthly redeterminations to begin again as of March 31.
An estimated 200,000 Nevadans may be redetermined ineligible for Medicaid benefits over the next 14 months, but NevadaHealthLink.com has options to keep them insured
(CARSON CITY, Nev.) – Starting April 1, all Nevadans on Medicaid will start to have their accounts redetermined on an annual basis for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic, causing many Nevadans to potentially lose their health care coverage. Nevada Health Link is helping to coordinate the transfer of qualifying applications to NevadaHealthLink.com to ensure Nevadans stay covered.
