Don't get excited yet. This isn't remotely settled yet, and even if the GOP backs off now, there's no reason to think they won't be back in full force a few months down the road.
GOP Senators Propose Delay On O'Care Repeal To Work Out Replacement
After publicly airing some of their grievances with the GOP's current strategy of repealing Obamacare without a replacement plan, a handful of Republican senators put their concerns in legislative writing. Five senators on Monday evening introduced a measure that would delay the next steps on repealing the Affordable Care Act by more than a month. The senators, in their statements accompanying the provision, said the delay would buy Congress more time to work out of the the details of a replacement.
Minnesota is a different story. They started out Open Enrollment with a bang, racking up enrollees at up to 12x last year's pace...but that was mainly due to their unique "enrollment cap" policy this year. Once the caps were filled and current enrollees were all squared away, new enrollments appear to have dropped off dramatically. They're now dead last percent-of-target wise (again, I can't include NY or VT here since neither has enough data available).
It feels a little odd to be alternating estimates about how many people could lose their coverage in each state with the number signing up for it at the same time, but that's where we are: Remember, there's still 6 more days for people to enroll for 2017 coverage starting in February, and 16 days after that to sign up for coverage starting in March.
Connect for Health Colorado Reports Increase in Healthcare Plan Selections for 2017 Coverage
DENVER — More than 158,000 Coloradans selected healthcare coverage for 2017 through the state health insurance Marketplace through Sunday, January 8, a rate 18 percent ahead of signups one year ago, according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado®.
The typical agreement a QHP issuer enters into if selling on the FFM requires them to keep the policy in force for the entire calendar year. [This exit clause] gives them option to term the policy abruptly if the Courts rule, or a Trump administration decides, that it won't pay CSR offset payments to carriers. Because this won't hit the Supreme Court until late 17 or early 18, I think this is as much about assuaging carriers fears of a Trump admin trying to destroy the marketplaces as anything else.
OK, it's really important to note that a) this is a very simplified rendering of the true situation and b) this only applies to two populations: The individual market (around 20 million people) and the medicaid expansion population (around 14 million, plus another 2.6 million being denied thanks to 19 states refusing to expand it). In other words, it has nothing to do with the large group market, small group market, Medicare, the VA/TriCare, federal/state/local public employees and so on. This chart only applies to around 37 million people in the U.S. Got it?
Having said that, what I've tried to do is to provide a visual representation of, among that population, who the ACA is working well for, who it isn't working so well for, and who can legitimately complain about feeling screwed by it:
Oops. Last week I reported that Access Health CT appeared to state that they had a total of 114,421 QHP selections during the current open enrollment period. The wording was slightly squirrelly ("currently active for 2016 and/or 2017"), especially since I also knew there were around 12,000 existing enrollees who still hadn't chosen a new policy...but an earlier update had given the number as "around 113,000" in a seemingly less-confusing way, so I assumed that all 114,421 applied to 2017.
22 Percent Increase Over Last Year • New Yorkers Show Demand for Quality, Affordable Healthcare
ALBANY, N.Y. (January 6, 2017) – NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace, today announced that more than 3.4 million people have enrolled in health insurance through December 24, 2016.
With almost a month to go until the end of the 2017 Open Enrollment period, participation in the NY State of Health Marketplace has already increased more than 22 percent since the last Open Enrollment period ended, January 31, 2016. Enrollment has increased in all 62 counties of the state. The overall share of New Yorkers now enrolled through the NY State of Health has reached nearly 18 percent of the state’s population.
Last March I cobbled together this pie chart, which attempted to break out the health coverage status of every single person living in the United States (yes, including undocumented immigrants). It gained quite a bit of attention at the time from healthcare reporters, wonks and so forth. While my numbers may have been slightly fuzzy here and there, it received a general seal of approval from Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, who stated "Obviously some of the estimates are approximations, but I don't see any glaring problems."
