Hoo, boy...this is gonna cause some heads to explode over at FOX News...
The most expensive provisions of Obamacare will cost taxpayers about $100 billion less than expected, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.
CBO also said it doesn't expect big premium increases next year for insurance plans sold through the health care law's exchanges.
In its latest analysis, CBO said the law's coverage provisions—a narrow part of the law that includes only certain policies—will cost the government $36 billion this year, which is $5 billion less than CBO's previous estimate. Over the next decade, the provisions will cost about $1.4 trillion—roughly $104 billion less than CBO last estimated.
But wait, there's more...
Monday's report also sheds some light on one of the big challenges still to come for Obamacare: next year's premiums. Some critics have warned that premiums could skyrocket next year, based in part on the demographics of the people who signed up for coverage this year.
It took me a few minutes to figure out why, at this point, Colorado would issue a formal press release with a "final" number when there's still a day and a half to go. However, I realized that it probably simply means that practically everyone who qualified for the 4/15 extension has already done so by now; presumably they're already over 124K and there's only a few hundred partial applications left anyway, so their final tally will come in somewhere between 124K - 125K, thus allowing them to confidently release the news.
On the down side, if this "winding down" effect is true in most other states, it also suggests that instead of one final mini-spike, the 4/15 deadline will actually result in a severe drop-off, making the final total more like 7.7M instead of 7.8M, but that's fine as well.
In any event, CO is up another 3,000 exchange QHPs since last week to over 124K total.
UPDATE 4/14: From a Denver Post article on the same topic:
About 500 small employers participated in the Small Business Marketplace, or SHOP, which saw 220 enroll, covering 1,860 employees and family members.
That's a whopping increase of...90 people. Still, every one counts...
(sigh) OK, until this morning I was under the impression that the exchange QHP enrollment rules were:
46 states +DC (36 on the Federally-run exchange, plus another 11 of the state-run exchanges): April 15 as long as you started the process by 3/31
Oregon: April 30, no "started by 3/31" requirement
Nevada: May 30 with the "started by 3/31" requirement
Connecticut & Washington State: No extensions
I did know that Florida was allowing paper applications received by April 7 to have their enrollments completed by April 30, but I thought that was it.
The new federal deadline -- a special enrollment period – already allowed registrations delayed by exchange-related problems to be finished as late as April 30 for those who submitted a paper application by April 7. That extension applied to individuals living in states where insurance enrollment under the Affordable Care Act is conducted through the federal exchange.
Today I'm narrowing my projection within that range; unless there's a really big absolute-last-minute spike today and tomorrow (which is conceivable), it's looking like the final tally will end up somewhere between 7.8 - 7.9M. 7.75 - 7.85M I suspect the 8M mark will remain tantilizingly out of reach.
Feeling a bit loopy on a rainy Sunday afternoon, so I present the mystery of one of the most significant songs ever released: Young MC's "Bust a Move":
Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry
In five days from now he's gonna marry
He's hoping you can make it there if you can
'Cause in the ceremony you'll be the best man
Question: If Larry is the one getting married, why are YOU the best man instead of his own brother? You're HARRY's best friend, not LARRY's.
For that matter, who waits until 5 days before the ceremony to ask someone to be in their wedding party, especially the best man? That's awfully short notice, barely enough time to get sized for the tux.
Posit: The brothers had some sort of falling out, perhaps over the bride. If so, that still doesn't explain why he'd ask his brother's best friend to be the best man, unless Larry just wants to rub Harry's nose in it.
As it happens, a friend of mine figured out the answer. If no one guesses it today, I'll post the answer tomorrow.
I honestly wasn't sure how to answer this. I had heard that some states already required insurers to allow kids up to 26 to be covered, but wasn't previously aware that NJ (or any other state) went beyond 26...
@ernestine1006 I have no idea. Didn't know any state required policies to offer higher than 26. Would imagine it works like min. wage...
I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but given that the March HHS report should be released sometime this week (unless it's delayed due to the craziness of the late-March surge), I thought it was important to post again:
The March HHS Enrollment Report may leave off March 30th and 31st, and therefore leave 600,000 exchange QHP enrollments to be tacked onto the April report instead.
Every one of the prior 5 HHS reports on ACA enrollments has been tied to the calendar week instead of the calendar month, cutting the tally off on whatever Saturday happens to fall closest to the end of that month:
His Tweet was intended as snark, of course, but at least a couple of people didn't appear to get the joke, and actually think this means I'm either hypocritical or some sort of 11th Dimensional Chess-playing Double Agent Mole working for the Koch Bros. Not sure how that would work, exactly, but whatever.
OK, I actually do have one update today (it's 8:30 at night and my kid is getting ready for bed).
When I first learned that Washington State's off-exchange total was a whopping 2.2x that of their exchange-based enrollments back on February 20th, I casually noted that if that held true nationally, it would make the off-exchange QHP tally easily 7.7M or higher ...and this was back when the exchange QHPs were only around 3.5M.
However, I also tried to be cautious in my "official" estimate, keeping it to around 4M or so since I didn't know how many there really were beyond the 300K (later 560K) or so I had documented at the time. After all, other states would likely have a much lower ratio of Off- to On-exchange QHPs; In Wisconsin, for instance, Off-Exchange QHPs were only about 23% as high as exchange-based.
