Maryland Insurance Administration Approves 2024 Affordable Care Act Premium Rates
Reinsurance Program Continues Positive Impact on Individual Rates
BALTIMORE – Maryland Insurance Commissioner Kathleen A. Birrane today announced the premium rates approved by the Maryland Insurance Administration for individual and small group health insurance plans offered in the state for coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2024.
Rate Changes for the Individual Market
The rates for individual health insurance plans subject to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will change/increase by an average of 4.7% for 2024. Approximately 229,000 Marylanders are impacted by the approved rates. However, the actual percentage by which the rates for a specific plan will change depends on the carrier and plan.
NJDOBI Adopts Regulations to Require Comprehensive Abortion Coverage in Department Regulated Health Insurance Markets
TRENTON – As part of the Murphy Administration’s efforts to protect access to reproductive health care, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance today announced the adoption of rules to require comprehensive abortion coverage as a part of all health benefits plans regulated by the department. This requirement, which was in place as of January 1, 2023 in the individual and small employer health insurance markets, will now be in effect for the fully-insured large employer health insurance market upon plan issuance or renewal.
Note: I decided that while the original headline accurately reflected my feelings about this WSJ Op-Ed, it was a bit over the top, so I've changed it to something less crude.
For years, the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, generally shorthanded as the ACA or, more colloquially known as "Obamacare," was the top policy target of Republicans and other conservatives.
It seemed as though not a day went by without some right-wing opinion piece being published attacking the ACA for one thing or another. Once in awhile these attacks had some validity, but the vast majority were either completely baseless or grossly exaggerated.
And yet, after the dust settled on the infamous 2017 ACA "repeal/replace" debacle, it seemed as though the GOP had pretty much tired of their relentless assault on the healthcare law. They had failed to repeal it even with control of the White House, Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court, and ended up settling for zeroing out of the federal Individual Mandate Penalty as a consolation prize.
While the Census found the percentage of Americans without insurance fell, even as a supplemental poverty measure increased following the end of pandemic-era assistance, ranking House Ways & Means Committee Democrat Richard Neal (MA) is highlighting the need to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act credits that are set to expire at the end of 2025.
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.
In Oregon, Democrats passed a bill in March to establish a basic health program, the details of which are being ironed out by a task force that began meeting this week. In Kentucky, Republicans approved $4.5 million in state funds this spring to set up a basic health program, which was signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor. An estimated 85,000 Oregonians and at least 37,000 Kentuckians will be eligible to enroll in the plans as soon as next year.
I've been a healthcare wonk for nearly a decade (in fact, the 10th anniversary of this website is coming up exactly one month from today), and I've learned a lot about how the U.S. healthcare system works (or, oftentimes, doesn't). Yet, even after all that time, I still occasionally stumble upon information about it which seems like it should have been something I knew all along, yet somehow never knew until now.
The Indian Health Service falls into this category. Don't get me wrong; I knew the IHS existed, and I knew that it serves roughly 2.2 million eligible Native Americans and Alaska Natives nationally. I've referenced it many times before, usually when discussing the types of healthcare coverage people have or funding included in various Congressional bills.
However, in all that time, I somehow was under the impression that the IHS was similar to either the Veterans Administration or Medicaid in terms of how it works, how it's paid for...and how comprehensive it is. I offer no excuses as to why I thought that was the case; I just did.
Inflation Reduction Act Continues to Lower Out-of-Pocket Prescription Drug Costs for Drugs with Price Increases Above Inflation
CMS announces savings for some people with Medicare on 34 Part B prescription drugs
A continuing key priority of the Biden-Harris Administration is lowering prescription drug costs for seniors and families. Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the list of 34 prescription drugs for which Part B beneficiary coinsurances may be lower between October 1 – December 31, 2023. Some people with Medicare who take these drugs may save between $1 and $618 per average dose starting October 1, 2023, depending on their individual coverage. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden and his Administration are lowering prescription drug costs for millions of American seniors and their families.
I haven't checked in on how many Americans have lost Medicaid or CHIP coverage due to the ongoing Medicaid Unwinding process playing out nationally since the end of July. Fortunately, KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) has been diligently tracking the data, and it continues to be extremely depressing and concerning.
At the time, "only" 3.77 million people had been confirmed to have lost coverage purely due to procedural/red tape reasons (as opposed to others who lost coverage after being determined ineligible any longer).
KFF's data is now pretty comprehensive (it includes nearly every state plus DC), and it's bad if not worse than many healthcare advocates feared as the numbers have continued to grow dramatically:
As widely expected, just one day after the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to help battle the XBB.1.5 strain of the disease, a panel of Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advisors have also given the updated vaccine their blessing. All that's left now is for CDC director Mandy Cohen (who was newly appointed as of July 10th) to sign off on it in order for distribution to the general public to begin. Via NPR:
A panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention backed the broad use of new COVID-19 vaccines, as cases of the respiratory illness rise.
The advisers voted 13-1 to recommend the vaccines for people ages 6 months and older. While the benefits appear to be greatest for the oldest and youngest people, the benefits of vaccination exceed the risks for everyone, according to a CDC analysis.
