Michigan

Over the past year or so I've written numerous entries about Michigan Republicans pushing through an ineffective, inefficient, cruel and pointless work requirement addition to Michigan's implementation of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, culminating in this one:

New work requirements for people in Michigan's Medicaid expansion group could cause as many as 183,000 people to lose their coverage.

Anywhere between 9 and 27 percent of the approximately 680,000 people enrolled in the Michigan Healthy Plan - or 61,000 to 183,000 recipients - could be kicked of the rolls.

That's up to three times what was estimated by the House Fiscal Agency when the work requirement bill was passed last year. The work requirements are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2020.

As I noted at the time, MI GOP claims that the work requirements will "fill job openings" is a load of hot, steaming garbage:

For years, Michigan, the state which put America on the road, has held the dubious honor of having the highest auto insurance premiums in the nation:

Michigan is the most expensive state for car insurance for the sixth consecutive year.

The Wolverine State is in a league of its own when it comes to car insurance with an average annual premium that is $313 higher than that of Louisiana, which ranked second. A Michigan car insurance policy averages $2,611, which is almost 80 percent higher than the national average of $1,457.

Louisiana remained in second place for the third year in a row, while Florida secured third place. Oklahoma and Washington D.C. rounded out the top five.

In most cases, a high number of uninsured drivers combined with less than stellar weather and high population density led these states onto the most expensive states for car insurance list.

There's several reasons for this, but one stands out above all others:

Light posting for the next two weeks as I'm dealing with my kid's upcoming bar mitzvah and some other personal stuff, but this one literally hits home.

You may recall that last spring, Republicans in the Michigan legislature attempted to push through a bill to change the state's current ACA Medicaid expansion program (which is close to "vanilla" Medicaid with a few minor tweaks) by tacking on pointless, ineffective and (in an earlier draft) blatantly racist work requirement provisions:

White, Rural GOP Counties Get Exempted from Medicaid Legislation

Republicans in the legislature are working to change Medicaid in Michigan, but only for certain people, as they have tailored the language of pending legislation to exempt some of their constituents from being affected.

As I noted a few weeks ago, I haven't written a whole lot about the idiotic (but terrifyingly so) TexasFoldEm lawsuit in awhile. Part of this is because I was out of the country over the holidays; part is because there hasn't been a whole lot of movement on the case since right-wing federal Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the ACA was unconstitutional using a legal argument so thin it hula hoops with a Cheerio.

Anyway, when I last checked in, a coalition of Attorneys General from 16 states (plus the District of Columbia) had formally filed to appeal Judge O'Connor's ruling, and the U.S. House of Representatives had also formally voted to intervene on behalf of defending the ACA from the lawsuit, which was filed last year by a coalition of 18 Republican Attorneys General, plus two Republican Governors.

Michigan was pretty much Ground Zero for the 2018 Blue Wave midterm elections. In addition to Democrats flipping the Governor's seat (and holding onto Debbie Stabenow's U.S. Senate seat), they also flipped the Attorney General, Secretary of State, one of two state Supreme Court seats, both of the state Board of Education seats which were up and all six state University Board seats which were up. In addition, they picked up two U.S. House seats, five state Senate seats and five state House seats.

It was a complete and utter repudiation of both Republican governance and their agenda.

You might expect the Michigan GOP to accept the clear will of the voters. You would be very, very wrong.

As Democratic candidates prepare to take three statewide offices on Jan. 1 — governor, attorney general and secretary of state — Republican lawmakers introduced bills Thursday to challenge their authority.

This is about as minor a rate filing update as I've had, but I'm posting it separately in the interest of completeness.

Insurance carriers in my home state of Michigan originally submitted their requested 2019 ACA individual market rate filings back in June. At the time, the average premium increase being asked for was pretty nominal, around 1.7%, with a smaller-than-average #ACASabotage factor of around 5% due to the ACA's Individual Mandate being repealed and #ShortAssPlans being expanded by the Trump Administration.

Today, just two days before the 2019 Open Enrollment Period actually begins, the Michigan Dept. of Financial Services finally posted the approved 2019 rate filings...and practically nothing ended up changing.

There's so many Republican candidates running around trying to gaslight America into completely ignoring their relentless, repeated attempts to strip away protections for people with pre-existing conditions that I've alread stopped bothering to try to keep up with them (I think my Rogues Gallery post stops at around 24 or so at the moment).

Here in Michigan, while I'm pretty sure all nine of our Republican members of Congress who voted for the AHCA last year are lying through their teeth about how they suddenly support "protecting coverage of pre-existing conditions", the one which seems to be getting the most attention is Mike Bishop (MI-08). Part of this is no doubt because Bishop is embroiled in one of the two closest races in the state (the other is MI-11, where Dave Trott also voted for the AHCA, but he's retiring so it's an open seat).

As I've written about many times before, my home state of Michigan is, unfortunately, among the states which are trying to institute work requirements for ACA Medicaid expansion for 680,000 Michiganders. As I've also written about many times before, work requirements for Medicaid are not only burdensome and cruel, they're counterproductive in terms of efficiency, economics and even in the stated goal of such programs, which is supposedly to "inspire" low-income people to get a job.

Michigan’s Medicaid Proposal Would Harm Low-Income Workers — And Can’t Be Fixed

Specifically, the Michigan bill, or any similar proposal, would:

UPDATE 3:50pm: OK, it sounds like you can completely disregard all the Medicaid-related stuff below; apparently there was a communication error. I've confirmed with the Whitmer campaign that the proposed reinsurance plan would not be tied in with Michigan's ACA Medicaid expansion program at all, nor would it have any impact on the Medicaid eligigibility threshold, which means this would indeed be a standard ACA individual market reinsurance program after all...which is what I assumed in the first place, and which would be perfectly fine!

Note that Chad Livengood has revised his article and headline accordingly, with a note at the bottom regarding the correction.

(Note: I uploaded Livengood's video clip to YouTube because it's the only way I could embed it within the blog post)

VIDEO: Today, I attempted to pin down @SchuetteOnDuty today on whether he will keep @onetoughnerd’s expanded Medicaid program intact if he’s elected governor.
I think I’ll try again next week... pic.twitter.com/hu6ejM2vpt

— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) August 15, 2018

Transcript:

Livengood: "Attorney General, if you're elected governor, are you gonna keep the Medicaid program that the governor's established, the Healthy Michigan plan?"