Lost amidst all the other overwhelming ACA-related news this week is one other important nugget: The Affordable Care Act's "individual mandate penalty", which was lowered to $0 in December 2017, was still the law of the land until December 31, 2018. It may have been changed at the time, but that change didn't become effective until January 1, 2019.
ELIMINATION OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY PAYMENT FOR INDIVIDUALS FAILING TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE.
(a) In General.--Section 5000A(c) <<NOTE: 26 USC 5000A.>> is amended--
(1) in paragraph (2)(B)(iii), by striking ``2.5 percent'' and inserting ``Zero percent'', and
(2) in paragraph (3)--
(A) by striking ``$695'' in subparagraph (A) and inserting ``$0'', and
(B) by striking subparagraph (D).
(b) <<NOTE: 26 USC 5000A note.>> Effective Date.--
The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2018.
And since I was too swamped with other stuff, I didn't have a chance to write about it until now. A bunch of other outlets have already posted the details, so here's Dylan Scott of Vox.com to save me the trouble:
A federal district judge has blocked Medicaid work requirements approved by the Trump administration in Arkansas and Kentucky.
I left out one tidbit in my latest post, however: There's been a lot of speculation the past two days about the timing of both Trump's DOJ memo formally asking the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act on Monday the 25th and the timing of the House Democrats' ACA 2.0 press conference/bill rollout the very next day on March 26th.
The House Dems announced on Saturday the 23rd that they were scheduling their big ACA 2.0 rollout on Tuesday the 26th.
The other six are directly related to the ACA...these are the six "mini ACA 2.0" bills which cover six of the eleven ACA repairs & improvement provisions included the the larger ACA 2.0 bill introduced yesterday. Here's summaries of all twelve bills being debated today:
Most people know that over the past three years, I've gone from being a fan of Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to...well, not being a fan; let's just leave it at that. They also know that while I support an eventual move towards a single payer-based healthcare system, I simply feel that it will have to be achieved via incremental steps (preferably large steps, not baby ones).
I addressed this point at the time in response to earlier attacks on me by MFA purists:
I need to take a moment here to call out progressives who badmouthed and scolded me last week for promoting the House ACA 2.0 bill by insisting that ONLY Bernie's M4A bill will do, and ANYTHING short of that--even in the short term--is unacceptable.
(sigh) Naming-wise, this is actually worse than the title of last year's ACA upgrade bill ("The Undo Sabotage and Expand Affordability of Health Insurance Act", or #USEAHIA), H.R.5155, which I didn't think was possible.
In any event, last year I went with simply calling it "ACA 2.0", which seems even more appropriate today. Others seem to agree:
The bill Democrats are rolling out to shore up Obamacare is called the Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions and Making Healthcare More Affordable Act. I think @charles_gaba calling it ACA 2.0 is going to catch on pretty quickly.
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today released the Health Insurance Exchanges 2019 Open Enrollment Report. With the Trump Administration’s focus on making healthcare more affordable, the report confirms another successful open enrollment period coinciding with a stabilization of premiums after years of substantial increases. Specifically, the report shows plan selections in Exchange plans in the 50 states and D.C. remained steady at 11.4 million. This represents a minimal decline of around 300,000 plan selections from the same time last year. Also, as outlined in the report, average total premiums for plans selected through HealthCare.gov dropped by 1.5 percent from the prior year, the first decline since the Exchanges began operations in 2014.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that Colorado is joining over a half-dozen other states in moving forward with their own ACA reinsurance program 1332 waiver request. At the time, I was a bit vague as to just how much the program, if approved, would actually lower unsubsidized premiums, especially since the wording of the bill differentiates between different rating areas:
The Commissioner shall set the payment parameters at amounts to achieve:
