Republican U.S. Senator Pat Roberts is scrambling for his political life after the Kansas Democratic Party pulled off a clever maneuver by deliberately dropping out of the race in order to shore up support for independent challenger Greg Orman (who may or may not caucus with the Dems, but would still be a huge step up from Roberts).
Anyway, Roberts has gone on the attack against Orman with a rather lame attack ad trying to paint Orman as an Obama/Pelosi/Ultra-Leftie Liberal, bla bla bla.
Aside from general Obamacare bashing, the ad makes one interesting claim: That "20,000 Kansans lost their healthcare because of" the ACA. The headline accompanying the narration reads "Obamacare cancels almost 20,000 Kansas health care plans" and cites "Kansas Watchdog" from 10/31/13 as the source:
When I last checked in on New Mexico's Medicaid expansion program, they were at around 55% of the total eligible. As of late August (judging by the Sept. 1st byline on the article), that number was up to 71%:
New Mexico projected that Medicaid expansion would sign up 219,000 new enrollees over a six-year period. In the first year alone (2014), they have already signed up 155,000, 71% of the best-case six-year estimate.
According to this article, WV's uninsured rate in 2013 stood at rougly 255K, of which 150K were eligible for the ACA's Medicaid expansion provision. Apparently they hit 145K as of 2 weeks ago...or 97% of the total eligible.
Now, the way the article words it, it's conceivable that the 145K figure could include some renewals and/or "woodworkers", which would mean that the actual percent of newly eligible WV residents is somewhat lower.
However, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates, as of last fall WV actually had around 267K uninsured, of which only 143K were eligible for Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, as of mid-July, the number of Medicaid enrollees specifically designated as "due to ACA expansion" already stood at 132,556, which means that we're talking about some number between 132K - 145K...out of some other number between 143K - 150K.
In other words, West Virginia has now enrolled a minimum of 88% of those eligible for Medicaid expansion...up to a maximum of 101%!!
GAH!! That's three "solid numbers but vague definitions attached to them" articles in a row this evening:
Braley also used the debate as an opportunity to show that he has worked with Republicans such as Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. The two worked together to expand Medicaid, giving more than 80,000 people health coverage who didn’t have it before.
OK, that makes it sound like 80K newly added to Medicaid via ACA expansion. However, in an earlier Iowa update, it made it sound like IA has some sort of Arkansas-like "private option" thing going on which had 20,000 enrolled at that time. So...is the 80K referred to above in addition to those 20K, or are they included in it?
(sigh) Again, not sure how to handle this. Anyone familiar with the Iowa Medicaid situation, please feel free to chime in below. Either way, it sounds like I can safely bump Iowa's "strict expansion" tally up from 20K to at least 80K, anyway...
Hmmm....like Hawaii, this enrollment update is a) tiny (small state) and b) confusing, since it means that either not a single additional person has enrolled in Delaware since April 30th (which I highly doubt), or it means that the number of people dropping out has precisely matched the number added since then (which I also highly doubt), or it means that the reporter got their numbers and dates mixed up by mashing up the 4/30 QHP total with the 8/31 Medicaid total:
As of Aug. 31, a total of 22,340 Delawareans have enrolled in coverage since Oct. 1, 2013, which Rita Landgraf, secretary of Delaware Health and Social Services, said came as a pleasant surprise to the commission.
...Of the enrollees in the health-care marketplace over the past 11 months, 7,943 individuals enrolled as part of the Medicaid expansion, an 8 percent increase from the month of July.
For all of the flaws with their implementation of an ACA exchange, Hawaii had at least one thing going for them during the off-season: They kept providing enrollment updates (as small as the numbers were) on a regular basis...through the end of July, that is. Since July 26th I haven't heard a peep out of HI before today:
The exchange, created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has struggled with participation over the past year, attracting just two medical insurers -- Hawaii Medical Service Association and Kaiser Permanente Hawaii -- and signing up just 10,750 individuals, the lowest in the nation.
Hmmm...on the one hand, 10,750 is actually a reasonably decent increase since July (1,087 people added over about 2 months, or 18/day). On the other hand, it's entirely possible that this number includes the 1,057 SHOP plan enrollees...in which case it isn't an update at all, or (scarier) it would mean Hawaii has only added 30 people to QHPs since 7/26.
OK, all of this is moot if the new software platform proves to be as much of a mess as last year's was, but assuming the new setup works properly, this sounds like a fairly smart way of cleaning up the mess:
Open enrollment begins November 15, but individuals’ deadlines to enroll may vary.
A total of 285,000 people who currently have temporary coverage will need to re-enroll, but a proposal is in the state’s hands to do that enrollment in three waves, with three different deadlines– Jan. 15th for wave one, Jan. 31st for wave two, and Feb. 15th for wave three.
For those of you currently enrolled in a non-subsidized Affordable Care Act Plan, your deadline to re-enroll is by the end of this year, December 31st. Missing that deadline will cause you to have a gap in your coverage.
Thanks to top contributor deaconblues for jumping back into the game and providing me with a whole batch of updates this evening. First up, the DC exchange, which posted their first update in 2 months:
From October 1, 2013 to September 9, 2014, 57,883 people have enrolled through DC Health Link in private health plans or Medicaid:
14,402 people enrolled in private health plans through the DC Health Link individual and family marketplace. 14,289 people enrolled through the DC Health Link small business marketplace. 29,192 people were determined eligible for Medicaid coverage through DC Health Link.
That's an increase of 1,872 QHPs, 510 new SHOP enrollees and 4,472 more Medicaid additions to date.
A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Tuesday that Obamacare subsidies provided on the federal HealthCare.gov exchange are invalid, agreeing with a ruling by a three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel against the subsidies.
The ruling, along with the fallout from the D.C. Circuit decision, could be a potentially significant defeat for the Obama administration.
On the one hand, this development probably makes it more likely that the SCOTUS will end up taking on the Halbig case (from the DC Circuit Court) after all (and/or the King case from the 4th Circuit...all three appear to focus on pretty much the same "federal exchange vs. state exchange" issue).
Key Republicans running for election Nov. 4 say the federal Affordable Care Act is putting Kentuckians out of work, but employment data and interviews with Kentucky-based economists suggest otherwise.
...Factually, the claim doesn't appear to be accurate. Kentucky had 26,271 more people working last month than it did in March 2010 when President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state's unemployment rate in that same period fell from 10.5 percent to 7.1 percent.
Manoj Shanker, an economist at the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training, said the health care law "is expected to be a net gain for the economy."
"It is definitely expected to create jobs, and not just for doctors and nurses," Shanker said.
...About 3,600 additional health care jobs were created over the last year in Kentucky as places such as Perry County...saw the percentages of their population without health insurance drop from as high as 20 percent to no more than 8 percent.
