Next up: Age brackets, gender, racial/ethnic groups and urban/rural communities. I'm also throwing in the stand-alone Dental Plan table here for the heck of it since I don't know where else to include it.
I don't have a ton to say about any of these, really. It's always interesting to me to see that 1.7% of ACA exchange enrollees are 65 or older. Not sure why they aren't on Medicare but I'm sure there are logical reasons.
Now it's time to move on to the actual demographic breakout of the 2024 Open Enrollment Period (OEP) Qualified Health Plan (QHP) enrollees.
First up is breaking out new enrollees vs. existing enrollees who either actively re-enroll in an exchange plan for another year or who passively allow themselves to be automatically renewed into their current plan (or to be "mapped" to a similar plan if the current one is no longer available).
The table below has the data for both Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) in all 50 states + DC as well as Basic Health Plan (BHP) enrollment in Minnesota and New York only, compared to the 2023 OEP.
Nearly a decade after then-Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin nixed a plan for a publicly funded system, advocates have renewed a push to transform health care with a single-payer system.
About 60 House Democrats have signed onto a proposal that calls for eventually replacing private health insurance premiums in the state with a public financing system. This week, supporters of the plan announced the creation of a universal healthcare caucus to push for the approval of the single-payer system.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Brian Cina, D-Burlington, said despite efforts to bring down the rate of uninsured Vermonters, thousands of people are still without healthcare coverage. He said those who may be eligible for healthcare plans have “fallen through the holes of a tattered social safety net.”
Last month I noted that Michigan legislative Democrats were planning on passing a package of bills designed to repeal a bunch of restrictions on abortion & other reproductive healthcare:
Dems to end 24-hour abortion waiting period, ban on Medicaid funding of procedure
LANSING — Michigan Democrats said Wednesday they will repeal laws that require a 24-hour waiting period to have an abortion performed, impose what they say are costly and unnecessary regulatory burdens on abortion clinics, prohibit abortions funded by Medicaid, and ban private health insurers from automatically covering abortions under standard policies.
The list includes 9 major items (some of which actually include a lot more than one provision within them). It really should include ten, since I forgot about implementing a Basic Health Plan program like New York and Minnesota have (and as Oregon is ramping up to do soon as well), but it's still a pretty full plate.
I managed movie theaters for most of the '90's, and was in charge of the concession stand & its staff. One year I came back from vacation to find the employees cleaning the concession stand after a big rush of customers.
I was happy to see this until I realized that some of the staff were using a mop with bleach-based cleanser to clean the floor at the same time other staffers were using an ammonia-based cleanser to clean the glass popcorn bins right next to the employee mopping.
I freaked out a bit, ordering them to stop immediately and turning on a fan to blow the fumes in opposite directions. Apparently neither the employees nor the other manager who had been covering my department while I was on vacation had ever learned that mixing bleach and ammonia can be fatal.
When I asked about it, the other manager apologized but explained that they were simply trying to follow both state and local health/safety board rules. You see, some of the staff were college students while others were minor high school students.
Yesterday the U.S. Census Bureau published new reports on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States as of 2022. Obviously all three of these are extremely important and interact closely with each other, but given that my focus is healthcare policy, I'm going to stick with the health insurance coverage portion.
According to the 2023 Current Population Survey Annual Social & Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC):
...92.1% of the U.S. population had health insurance coverage for all or part of 2022 (compared to 91.7% in 2021). An estimated 25.9 million or 7.9% of people did not have health insurance at any point during 2022, according to the 2023 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). That compares to 27.2 million or 8.3% of people who did not have health insurance at any point during 2021.
