A few weeks ago I noted that, thanks to California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratically-controlled state legislature finally reaching a compromise agreement on how to allocate ~$330 million/year in revenue generated by the state's individual mandate penalty, around $83 million will be utilized to dramatically reduce out of pocket expenses for hundreds of thousands of ACA exchange enrollees.
UPDATE: It turns out that this is not a "new" study; it's the final, peer-reviewed version of the same pre-print study from last fall by the same researchers, which makes a lot more sense.
Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jacob Wallace, PhD; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, PhD; Jason L. Schwartz, PhD
If this study title and its authors sound vaguely familiar, it's because the same three researchers (from the Yale School of Public Health/Management) published a similar study last fall...which I wrote about at the time:
I didn't actually get around to writing up the post until June, but I actually bought the car, a 2022 Kia Niro EV, in early March 2022. My write-up included my experience taking a road trip from my home in a suburb north of Detroit, Michigan to Washington, DC and back.
Well, it's 16 months later, I've driven over 10,000 miles in the new car, and I just got back from another road trip to DC & back.
As I noted in my last update from March of this year, the EV industry and market have both gone through some tumultuous changes since I first bought my car, including (but not limited to):
Some health care policy experts are sounding the alarm that allowing standalone telehealth plans may simply be a shortcut for employers to cut rising health care costs while subverting Affordable Care Act consumer protections, but telehealth proponents tout the policy as simply a way to complement not replace more-expansive health insurance benefits. The debate has been muddied by confusion over how the bill’s “excepted benefits” policy differs from a narrower pandemic waiver that allowed some workers to get standalone telehealth plans that mimicked excepted benefits.
The Telehealth Benefit Expansion for Workers Act would add telehealth as an excepted benefit to the “menu” of health care options for all employees, not just those who do not qualify for major medical insurance plans as was the case under an expired pandemic telehealth flexibility. The legislation has been passed by the House Education & the Workforce committee and will be taken up by E&C Thursday (July 13).
ST. PAUL, Minn.—As roughly 1.5 million Minnesotans who currently have Medical Assistance (Minnesota’s Medicaid program) or MinnesotaCare coverage are scheduled to go through the eligibility renewal process over the next year, some will find out they are no longer eligible for these public health care programs and need to find new health insurance. Minnesota’s official health insurance marketplace, MNsure, is here to help those Minnesotans find new coverage.
“If you learn you no longer qualify for Medical Assistance or MinnesotaCare coverage, you may have more health insurance options than you think,” said MNsure CEO Libby Caulum. “MNsure is here to help you and your family understand your options, apply for discounts to save money on monthly premiums, and make a smooth transition to a private health plan if you’re eligible. We can help you find new coverage so you can keep getting the care you need.”
Georgia's health department doesn't publish their annual rate filings publicly, but they don't hide them either; I was able to acquire pretty much everything via a simple FOIA request. Huge kudos to the GA OCI folks!
Unfortunately, it looks like less than half of Georgia's small group market carriers have submitted their filings (alternately, it's conceivable that the other have have pulled out of the G small group market, though I highly doubt that). Only four of the eleven carriers offering policies in 2023 have filings included in the package sent to me by GA OCI. Not sure what that's about.
In any event, Georgia's individual market has grown dramatically over the past year (813,000 people vs. 660,000 a year ago), but the requested 2024 rate filings are pretty ugly, ranging from a somewhat reasonable 6.4% to as high as 27.7% for Cigna (ouch). The weighted average overall is just over 15% even.
Arkansas is a problematic state for many reasons, but I have to give their insurance dept. website high praise for posting their annual rate filings in a clear, simple & comprehensive fashion (which is to say, not only do they post the avg. premium changes for each carrier, they also post the number of covered lives for each, which is often difficult for me to dig up). Better yet, they also include direct links to the filing summaries and include the SERFF tracking number for each in case I need to look up more detailed info.
Anyway, there's nothing terribly noteworthy in the 2024 filings, in which AR carriers are seeking an average 5.0% rate hike on the individual market and 5.5% for small group plans. USAble HMO is launching a new line of HMO insurance products in the state next year (called "Octave" I believe) but otherwise it looks pretty calm.
New Report Projects Nearly 19 Million Seniors Will Save $400 Per Year on Out-of-Pocket Prescription Drug Costs
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced actions to protect consumers from junk health plans, surprise medical bills, and excess costs that lead to medical debt. These actions build on the Biden-Harris Administration’s effort to eliminate hidden fees in every sector of the economy and lower health care costs for American seniors and families.
Coinciding with the actions taken today, HHS also released a new report projecting that nearly 19 million seniors will save approximately $400 per year on prescription drug costs when the $2,000 out-of-pocket prescription drug spending cap from the Inflation Reduction Act – President Biden’s historic lower cost prescription drug law – goes into effect in 2025.
Surprise bills happen when an out-of-network provider is unexpectedly involved in a patient’s care. Patients go to a hospital that accepts their insurance, for example, but get treated there by an emergency room physician who doesn’t. Such doctors often bill those patients for large fees, far higher than what health plans typically pay.
