I've been operating ACASignups.net for nearly 4 1/2 years. It started out as a nerdy hobby thing in my spare time, but quickly overtook my life. I always planned to shut it down after the first Open Enrollment Period ended back in April 2014...and then in March 2015...and again in 2016. Year after year, people clamored for me to keep it going one more year.
Connect for Health Colorado® Reports Plan Selection Totals for 2018 in Line with Target and Nearly Matching Longer 2017 Enrollment Period
DENVER — More than 165,000 Coloradans selected healthcare coverage for 2018 through the state health insurance Marketplace by the close of Open Enrollment, according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado®.
“These are positive results that show us holding steady and in line with our targets for the year,” said Connect for Health Colorado CEO Kevin Patterson. “Despite the uncertainty that created some confusion in the market, we have seen volumes that nearly match last year’s longer Open Enrollment Period. I am happy to see so many families and individuals put this protection for their health and financial well-being in place for the year. We will be reporting our results in coming weeks in our annual End of Open Enrollment Report.”
Gov. Matt Bevin has issued an executive order that would strip Medicaid coverage from nearly half a million Kentuckians should his proposed overhaul of the federal-state health plan be struck down in court.
No one has filed a legal challenge to Bevin's changes to Kentucky's Medicaid program that federal authorities approved Friday.
But several advocacy groups have said some of the changes — such as requiring some "able-bodied" adults to work or volunteer at least 20 hours a week — likely will be challenged in court because they violate federal law that establishes Medicaid purely as a health program and does not authorize work requirements.
Every quarter, Gallup posts the results of an exhaustive healthcare coverage survey (with over 25,000 U.S. adults). They just posted the latest update, which covers the fourth quarter of 2017, and the results are...striking.
Gallup has a rather annoying habit of not including the full Y-axis in their charts, so I've reformatted their quarterly survey results into a fuller version, noting a couple of key dates. The most obvious takeaway:
The U.S. uninsured rate among adults, which had reached 18% just before the major Affordable Care Act provisions (individual market exchanges and Medicaid expansion) kicked into effect, reached an all-time low of 10.9% last winter...
...only to reverse the trend since then, climbing back up again over the first year of the Trump Administration to end 2017 at 12.2%.
One important thing to keep in mind is that Gallup's surveys only include adults over 18, which means they only include about 77% of the population. Since children tend to have a much lower uninsured rate than adults (thanks in large part to programs like Medicaid and CHIP), this skews the results for the total population by several percentage points.
UPDATE 5/4/18:On the one-year anniversary of the House Republicans passing their ACA repeal bill, I figured it'd be a good time to once again promote my 17-minute explainer video about why the ACA was necessary, how it's supposed to work, why some parts of it are very much in need of fixing/improvement and an overview of every one of the half-dozen different repeal bills that the GOP tried to push through last year.
Over 2,500 people have watched my 17-minute 3-Legged Stool explainer video to date, and many have given it high praise (especially considering the utter lack of production value). However, there've been a few complaints about a couple of patches which are a bit slow or where the slides accompanying the audio are a bit confusing, so I've added some additional slides and reworked a few others to make it more clear. I've also noted the most significant update: That in the end, yes, the GOP did indeed repeal the Individual Mandate.
With the big news this week about CMS giving work requirements the green light and Kentucky immediately jumping all over it, I decided to look up a few data points from some expansion states which don't include a work requirement for the heck of it:
As of January 8th, 2018, Michigan had 669,362 adults enrolled in the "Healthy Michigan" program (aka, ACA Medicaid expansion), or over 6.7% of the total population.
Men make up slightly more enrollees than women (51% to 49%)
Enrollees are spread fairly evenly by age brackets (19-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 and 55-64)
Around 80% of MI expansion enrollees earn less than 100% of the federal poverty line; the other 20% earn between 100-138% FPL.
Today, with one day left for people to sign up before the January 15th deadline, the Seattle Times reports that WA's tally is up to 234,000:
Washington state is on pace to increase the number of people with health insurance despite efforts by the Republican Congress and the Trump administration to gut the laws known as Obamacare that expanded insurance coverage across the nation.
*UPDATE: Some have accused me of hyperbole in the headline because a) it's a "state-approved health or financial literacy" course, not a "can you read" test and b) because it would only be required if they're unable to meet the requirements in other ways. I guess I can see their point, but it strikes me as splitting hairs:
First, "literacy course" was their wording, not mine (I guess there's a distinction between "completeing a course" and "passing a test"?).
Second, there doesn't appear to be any real description of the "courses" in question--how long it is, what the criteria for measuring "completion" is, who would be conducting the course, whether you'd have to attend classes in person (vs doing so online?), how many sessions there'd be and so forth. Here's the description as laid out in the waiver request itself:
...After trying — and failing — to get a high-profile lawsuit dismissed, Dave & Buster’s agreed to pay $7.425 million to settle the suit, which accused the restaurant and entertainment chain of illegally cutting staffers’ hours to prevent them from receiving healthcare benefits.
...As HR Morning covered previously, the ERISA lawsuit was the first case in which an employer was accused of intentionally interfering with employees’ hours to avoid the ACA’s employer mandate.
The lawsuit hinged on a very specific section of ERISA — the employees sued under ERISA Section 510.
Granted, ERISA was written primarily to apply to retirement plans. But Section 510 can be applied to a number of benefit plans as well — including healthcare coverage.
Section 510 says (the critical parts are in bold):
