CMS tells Inside Health Policy that it will be releasing a final report on its COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period in September and points out that consumers who submitted their applications by the Aug. 15 SEP deadline still have 30 days to select a plan. Additionally, staffers are contacting the “very small group” of consumers who reached out to the Marketplace Call Center just before the deadline but were unable to get through to a representative so that those individuals have a chance to enroll, the agency confirms.
The final report was obvious, since the 2021 "No Excuses Needed" SEP still ran through August 15th in most states (and is still ongoing in a few), but I figured they'd come out with it in late August, not September.
I admit that I didn't know (or had forgotten?) about those who submitted their apps prior to 8/15 still having a full month to select a plan. Granted, if they wait until mid-September their coverage won't start until October, giving them just 3 months to use up a full 12-month deductible, but still.
Covered California’s enrollment continues to surge — with 364,000 signing up since February, more than double normal enrollment rates — as more people sign up for coverage to benefit from the new savings and lower premiums available through the American Rescue Plan.
Lower-income households are getting a quality plan for an average of $35 per month, with more than 738,000 people getting brand-name plans for just $1 per month.
Middle-income consumers, who were previously ineligible for federal financial help, are saving an average of nearly $800 per month and seeing their monthly premiums reduced by more than 70 percent.
Covered California’s increased enrollment includes a higher proportion of African American and Latino Californians, two of the communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing recession.
Those who enroll by Aug. 31 would be insured starting Sept. 1.
Wolf Administration Commemorates Pennie’s Two-Year Anniversary; Encourages Pennsylvanians to Enroll in Health Coverage
Deadline to Receive 2021 Savings on Health Coverage is August 15
Harrisburg, PA – The Wolf Administration today commemorated the two-year anniversary of Pennie, Pennsylvania’s state-based health exchange. To date, more than 335,000 consumers have enrolled for coverage through Pennie and, because of the American Rescue Plan, average premiums after subsidies have dropped by half since the beginning of the year, down to $86 a month.
I'm gonna be posting mea culpas for a few days for missing important ACA-related announcements over the past few weeks.
As I've noted several times before, the American Rescue Plan includes an extremely helpful provision for any American who received unemployment benefits at any point during 2021. The short version is that if you received UI benefits for even a single week this year and want to enroll in ACA exchange coverage, your household income will be defined as being 133% of the Federal Poverty Level for purposes of ACA subsidy eligibility regardless of how high or low your actual 2021 income ends up being.
This means, in turn, that you're eligible for a fully-subsidized ACA exchange plan...that is, there will be at least one Silver plan available for $0/month in premiums after subsidies are applied.
HOWEVER, you can still #GetCovered for the rest of 2021 in a few states (including two of the largest ones), and there are still millions of uninsured Americans nationally who are eligible for ACA-compliant coverage for the rest of this year via other options. Let's review!
2021 ACA Special Enrollment Period (SEP): If you live in California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York or Vermont, the deadline for the "no questions asked" SEP goes beyond 8/15. In CA, DC & NY it actually runs through the end of the year!
My recent obsession with COVID vaccination rates means that I've fallen embarrassingly behind on my annual ACA rate change project, and nothing illustrates this more than the fact that Covered California issued this press release over two weeks ago and I'm just now getting to writing about it:
The American Rescue Plan will continue to provide lower premiums, at levels never seen before, throughout the entire 2022 coverage year.
The new and expanded financial help has led to a record 1.6 million people enrolled in Covered California, which gives the state one of the healthiest consumer pools in the nation for the seventh consecutive year.
The record enrollment and healthy consumer pool were key factors in negotiating a preliminary rate increase for California’s individual market of just 1.8 percent in 2022, and a three-year average of only 1.1 percent (2020-2022).
With expansions of coverage by several carriers and a new carrier in one region, consumers will have even more choice: All Californians will have two or more choices, 94 percent will be able to choose from three carriers or more, and 81 percent of Californians will have four or more choices.
Consumers can sign up now to benefit from the increased financial help provided by the American Rescue Plan, which is lowering premiums and enabling 700,000 people to get covered for only $1 per month.
Last week I gave a rough estimate of perhaps another 340K more new enrollees via HC.gov for the month of June along with another ~135K via the 15 SBMs, which would bring the grand total up to around 2.57 million nationally.
Five days ago I noted that, based on an offhand comment I heard during a White House webinar about the ongoing ACA Special Enrollment Period, it sounds like HealthCare.Gov quietly added over 100,000 new enrollees during the final week of July.
Based on this and the existing data I have from HealthCare.Gov and the 15 state-based ACA exchanges, I concluded that:
Also, as always, remember that everything above refers to the federal exchange only; the 15 states which operate their own ACA exchanges comprise roughly 29% of the 2.1 million QHP selections nationally as of the end of June. A couple of state-based exchanges have already terminated their own SEPs (Idaho, Minnesota and Massachusetts), but the rest are still chugging along, so assuming a similar ratio for July, that would put the monthly total at around 475,000 nationally, for a grand total of roughly 2.57 million or so as of July 31st.
