With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
It was in early 2021 that Congressional Democrats passed & President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which among other things dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the level it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.
In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.
Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:
I don't want to get out over my skis here; a single Senator saying that she supports something in an interview is a far cry from them actually voting to do so, especially when you'd need several more members of both the House and Senate (including the leadership of both chambers) to even hold that vote.
Even so, this is still a pretty significant development, given how thin the odds are of the improved subsidies included by the IRA getting extended are at the moment.
Nathaniel Herz: On the specific issue of the enhanced tax credits for the premiums for the individual marketplace health insurance plans — it seems like there is a real question about whether those continue...
Alaska is a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, both carriers (Premera Blue Cross and Moda Health Plan) include summaries which list their current enrollment data. Unfortunately, the average rate increase being requested by the carriers for 2025 is up another 17%. While nearly all ACA exchange enrollees receive financial subsidies, this is still pretty steep for the few who aren't.
February 23: CMS approved a postpartum coverage extension state plan amendment (SPA) for Alaska (link to come). This SPA approval will extend comprehensive coverage after pregnancy through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for a full 12 months. The approval of Alaska’s SPA marks critical progress in implementing the CMS Maternity Care Action Plan, which supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s Maternal Health Blueprint, a comprehensive strategy aimed at improving maternal health, particularly in underserved communities. Alaska is the 44th state, including D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have extended postpartum Medicaid coverage to a full year, made possible by President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP), and made permanent by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (CAA, 2023), which President Biden signed into law in December 2022.
Alaska is a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, Premera Blue Cross includes a summary which lists their enrollment numbers, and with Moda being the only other carrier on the market, I was able to estimate a weighted average (assuming Moda has around 4,000 enrollees, which seems about right given Alaska's total on-exchange enrollment of roughly 25,500 people during Open Enrollment; effectuated enrollment as of last spring is almost certainly a couple thousand lower overall).
Alaska is also a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, Premera Blue Cross includes a summary which lists their enrollment numbers, and with Moda being the only other carrier on the market, I was able to estimate a weighted average (assuming Moda only has around 2,200 enrollees, which seems about right given Alaska's total on-exchange enrollment of roughly 23,000 people).
However, the final/approved rate filings for 2023 are out now that we're into the Open Enrollment Period, and while Premera saw a slight reduction in their rate hike, Moda's are jumping from a 4% increase to a whopping 12.1%. Wow.
Alaska is also a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, Premera Blue Cross includes a summary which lists their enrollment numbers, and with Moda being the only other carrier on the market, I was able to estimate a weighted average (assuming Moda only has around 2,200 enrollees, which seems about right given Alaska's total on-exchange enrollment of roughly 23,000 people).
Average rate change for unsubsidized enrollees in 2022 will be an ugly 18.7% on the individual market...underscoring how vitally important it is that the American Rescue Plan subsidies be extended (preferably permanently).
On the small group market, the unweighted average increase is 4.8%.
As I noted last night, thanks to the federal Rate Review website finally being updated to include the final, approved 2022 rates for both the individual and small group markets in all 50 states (+DC), I've been able to fill in the missing data for my annual ACA Rate Change Project.
As I note there, the overall weighted average looks like it'll be roughly +3.5% nationally.
Normally I write up a separate entry for both the preliminary and approved rate changes in each individual state, but it seems like overkill to create 14 separate entries at once. Besides, in many of these states there's been few if any changes between the preliminary and approved rate changes.
Like Wyoming, Alaska is also a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and three (possibly four?) on their small group market. Also like Wyoming, Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, Premera Blue Cross includes a summary which lists their enrollment numbers, and with Moda being the only other carrier on the market, I was able to estimate a weighted average (assuming Moda only has around 2,000 enrollees, which seems about right given Alaska's total on-exchange enrollment of roughly 18,000 people).
On the small group market, only three carriers are listed in the federal database; Premera Blue Cross isn't, which either means they're pulling out of the state's small biz market or they just haven't been added to the database yet.
Average rate change for unsubsidized enrollees in 2022 will be 10.6% on the individual market...except that almost every enrollee will qualify for financial subsidies this year. On the small group market, the unweighted average increase is 6.4%.
