Georgia

Georgia

Back in November I put out a Break Glass In Case Of Fire-style call to action:

About 2 years ago, GOP Georgia Governor Brian Kemp submitted an ACA Section 1332 Waiver request to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. As Katie Keith of Health Affairs explained at the time, it consisted of two parts...the first of which was fairly noncontroversial, the second of which was...well, not good:

The application reflects a two-phase approach: a state-based reinsurance program to begin in plan year 2021, followed by a transition to the “Georgia Access” model beginning in plan year 2022. Both components of the waiver application would extend through plan year 2025.

With the Build Back Better Act having passed the U.S. House of Representatives last fall only to come screeching to a halt when it reached the U.S. Senate due to all 50 Republicans + Dem. Senator Joe Manchin refusing to support it, Congressional Democrats have started introducing standalone bills in an attempt to push through at least some of the more popular provisions.

One of these, which would limit co-pays for insulin to no more than $35/month or less, passed the House last week.

Today, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, who also sponsored the Senate version of the insulin co-pay cap bill, introduced a second stand-alone bill plucked from the ashes of Build Back Better:

Senator Reverend Warnock Introduces New Legislation to Cap Prescription Drug Costs for Georgia Seniors

Georgia

UPDATE 12/17/21: I've already submitted my comment to the Health & Human Services Dept. Now, the National Health Law Program’s My Care Counts project has created an easy-to-use public comment tool for you to submit your own. PLEASE DO SO before January 9th!

MAKE SURE *NOT* TO USE THE GENERIC DEFAULT LANGUAGE IN THE FORM, HOWEVER; MAKE IT YOUR OWN.

See the rest of the post below for the background/details on this issue.

About 2 years ago, GOP Georgia Governor Brian Kemp submitted an ACA Section 1332 Waiver request to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. As Katie Keith of Health Affairs explained at the time, it consisted of two parts...the first of which was fairly noncontroversial, the second of which was...well, not good:

Rate Changes

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.

Georgia

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 which was responded to within a few hours of my asking.

There's several important developments happening in Georgia this year; I'll let Louise Norris explain:

As of 2021, there are six insurers that offer exchange plans in Georgia. Five additional insurers plan to join them for 2022: Friday Health Plans, Bright Health, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Cigna (Aetna, UHC, and Cigna all participated in Georgia’s exchange previously, but left at the end of 2016).

Georgia

I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In most states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources; unfortunately, Georgia isn't among them, though I've estimated January enrollment based on CMS's just-released Monthly Medicaid & Chip report (which use a slightly different methodology than the MBES reports).

Georgia

Now that I've developed a standardized format/layout & methodology for tracking both state- and county-level COVID vaccination levels by partisan lean (which can also be easily applied to other variables like education level, median income, population density, ethnicity, etc), I've started moving beyond my home state of Michigan.

Here's Georgia:

Georgia

Now that I've developed a standardized format/layout & methodology for tracking both state- and county-level COVID vaccination levels by partisan lean (which can also be easily applied to other variables like education level, median income, population density, ethnicity, etc), I've started moving beyond my home state of Michigan.

Here's Georgia:

Gold Bars

NOTE: This is an updated version of a post from a couple of months ago. Since then, there's been a MASSIVELY important development: The passage of the American Rescue Plan, which includes a dramatic upgrade in ACA subsidies for not only the millions of people already receiving them, but for millions more who didn't previously qualify for financial assistance.

Much has been written by myself and others (especially the Kaiser Family Foundation) about the fact that millions of uninsured Americans are eligible for ZERO PREMIUM Bronze ACA healthcare policies.

I say "Zero Premium" instead of "Free" because there's still deductibles and co-pays involved, although all ACA plans also include a long list of free preventative services from physicals and blood screenings to mammograms and immunizations with no deductible or co-pay involved.

(updated w/latest election results)

In January 2021, the U.S. Senate will have at least 48 Democrats (including 2 Senators who caucus with the Dems) and at least 50 Republicans.

The last two seats are both in Georgia. Elected GOP Senator David Perdue was up for re-election against Democrat Jon Ossoff and a Libertarian candidate, while appointed GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler was running for the first time in a "jungle primary" against another Republican and several Democrats in a special election.

Under Georgia state law, if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote (plus 1) in the November election, the top two finishers go on to a runoff election on January 5th.

Since no candidates in the special election came close to 50%, it will go to a runoff between Loeffler and top Democratic finisher Rev. Raphael Warnock...and the regular Senate race will also going to go to a runoff between Perdue and Ossoff, as Perdue has fallen below the 50% threshold.

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