The 2023 ACA Open Enrollment Period is still ongoing in 6 states, and many people can still enroll in other states as well!

The 2023 OEP is the best ever for the ACA for several reasons:

• First, the expanded/enhanced premium subsidies first introduced in 2021 via the American Rescue Plan, which make premiums more affordable for those who already qualified while expanding eligibility to millions who weren't previously eligible, are continuing for at least another 3 years via the Inflation Reduction Act;

• Second, because several states are either expanding or retooling their own state-based subsidy programs to make ACA plans even more affordable for their enrollees;

• And third, because millions more Americans who weren't previously eligible for ACA subsidies (even with the expanded ARP/IRA enhancements) are now eligible via the Biden Administration's closure of the so-called "Family Glitch."

There's also expanded carrier & plan offerings in many states/counties, and as always, millions of people will be eligible for zero premium comprehensive major medical policies.

If you've never enrolled in an ACA healthcare policy before, or if you looked into it a few years back but weren't impressed, please give it another shot now. Thanks to these major improvements it's a whole different ballgame.

Here's thirteen important things to know when you #GetCovered for 2023:

I truly apologize for somehow missing this:

Open Enrollment for 2023 Health Insurance Begins October 15

Idahoans can now determine their tax credit and shop for a plan within minutes.

 BOISE, Idaho – Open Enrollment for health insurance in Idaho starts tomorrow, October 15. Idahoans can enroll in 2023 medical and dental coverage through Your Health Idaho, the state’s health insurance exchange. For the first time ever, Idahoans will be able to apply for a tax credit and health insurance on the same application and find out if they qualify within minutes. The new technology is designed to improve Idahoan’s health insurance shopping experience.

It was just four days ago that Bright Healthcare, which had been aggressively expanding their individual market coverage area footprint as recently as a year ago, suddenly announced that they were doing a complete 180 and instead pulling out of virtually the entire individual & small group markets nationally starting in January 2023.

This shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as people thought, however; Bright had already announced back in April of this year that they were pulling out of five states, and healthcare analyst Ari Gottlieb had written an impressively-researched post about the warning signs surrounding Bright's plight back in August, which I expanded upon here at the time.

Florida state law gives private corporations wide berth as to what sort of information, which is easily available in some other states, they get to hide from the public under the guise of it being a "trade secret."

In the case of health insurance premium rate filing data, that even extends to basic information like "how many customers they have."

If you think I'm being sarcastic, this is literally a screenshot of what you get if you attempt to use the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation's filing search:

Hmmmm...Vermont's filings are usually pretty easy to average because a) they don't redact any of their filing data; b) they make the forms easy to access; and c) they only have two insurance carriers operating in the individual or small group markets anyway (in fact, it's the same two carriers in both markets).

This year, however, there's an odd discrepancy going on between what I had originally reported as the preliminary 2023 rate filings and what's showing up as the preliminary filings under the approved rate changes.

Back in May, the preliminary individual market rate filings were +12.3% for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and +17.4% for MVP, for a weighted average increase of 14.7%, while the small group filings averaged out to +14.6%.

This was also reported by Liora Engel-Smith of VT Digger at the time:

As I (and many others) have been noting for many months now, the official end of the federal Public Health Emergency (PHE), whenever it happens, will presumably bring with it reason to celebrate...but will also likely create a new disaster at the same time:

What goes up usually goes back down eventually, and that's likely to be the case with Medicaid enrollment as soon as the public health crisis formally ends...whenever that may be.

Well, yesterday Ryan Levi and Dan Gorenstein of of the Tradeoffs healthcare policy podcast posted a new episode which attempts to dig into just when that might be, how many people could be kicked off of the program once that time comes and how to mitigate the fallout (I should note that they actually reference my own estimate in the program notes):

Georgia's health department doesn't publish their annual rate filings publicly, but they don't hide them either; I was able to acquire pretty much everything via a simple FOIA request. Huge kudos to the GA OCI folks!

A few years ago, Georgia's GOP Governor, Brian Kemp, put in a request to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for what's known as a Section 1332 State Innovation Waiver. If approved, these waivers allow individual states to modify how the ACA operates in their state as long as they can prove that the changes would a) cover at least as many residents b) at least as comprehensively without c) increasing federal spending in the process.

via Covered California:

Covered California Executive Director Jessica Altman commended President Joe Biden’s administration for finalizing the proposed fix to the “Family Glitch,” an issue that had prevented millions of Americans with unaffordable employer health insurance from getting marketplace coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

“Covered California supports this proposed rule change, which will build on the Affordable Care Act’s vision and intent to expand access to affordable health insurance, by opening the door of coverage to millions of Americans.

This is a new era for the Affordable Care Act, as Covered California prepares to enter its 10th open enrollment period, with increased financial help available for those who need coverage as well as our 1.7 million enrollees.

Via the SERFF database, it looks like Rhode Island's two individual market carriers have had their 2023 individual market rate changes finalized. Blue Cross Blue Shield is increasing rates lower than they originally requested (3.1% instead of 9.6%), while Neighborhood Health Plan rates are increasing more than they originally asked for (8.3% vs. 6.9%).

Overall weighted average increase: +6.1%, down from +8.0%.

Unfortunately I can't find the final rate change filings for the small group market yet.

via the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation:

Salem – People who purchase their own health insurance, as well as those in the small group market, can view the final rate decisions for the 2023 health insurance plans, which have been released by the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation. The division reviews and approves rates through a detailed and transparent process before they can be charged to policyholders.

The division conducted a rigorous review, including holding public hearings and taking public comments, to reach the final decisions. The division published preliminary decisions in July before the public hearings. In the public hearings, members of the public, health insurance companies, and the division have the opportunity to further review and analyze the preliminary decisions.