Via Health Source Rhode Island:

HealthSource RI Concludes Open Enrollment Period

• 4,318 Rhode Islanders are newly insured, supporting state’s outstanding insured rate of 97%  

PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) announces that its annual Open Enrollment period has concluded as of January 31, with 4,318 Rhode Island residents newly enrolled in the affordable qualified health plans available through the state marketplace. An additional 24,343 individuals, or 83% of last year’s customers, renewed their coverage during the same period starting November 1.

That's 28,661 QHP selections total, down 11.4% from the 2022 Open Enrollment Period.

“We’re encouraged that each year more Rhode Islanders are taking advantage of the quality, affordable coverage options available to them through HealthSource RI,” said Governor Dan McKee. “Rhode Island continues to be a national leader in health coverage and HSRI is an instrumental piece of the effort to maintain our extraordinarily high rate of insurance coverage.”

UPDATE 3/15/23: The agreed-to Medicaid expansion deal has passed the NC State Senate! It now just needs to pass the state House one final time and then it's on to Gov. Cooper's desk to be signed into law!

UPDATE 3/22/23: The bill has now passed the state House by a stunning 94-22 margin as well! It still has to pass one more time tomorrow (a "concurrence" vote) and then it's on to Gov. Cooper's desk!

UPDATE 3/23/23: On the 13th Anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, the North Carolina House has officially taken the final vote needed for passage, with the bill easily passing 87 - 24. It's now onto Gov. Cooper, who has vowed to sign it into law ASAP.

UPDATE 3/8/23: HB 400 just overwhelmingly passed the New Mexico House!

HUGE NEWS! #HB400 just passed the House Floor by a vote of 58-10! Huge thanks to Rep. @reenaszcz & Speaker @JavierForNM for their work carrying #MedicaidForward through the House of Representatives & to everyone who reached out to their legislator. On to the Senate! #nmleg #nmpol 

— NM Together for Healthcare (@NMT4HC) March 8, 2023

Hey, remember the Inflation Reduction Act?

Remember how one of its healthcare provisions includes putting a copay cap of $35/month on insulin for Medicare enrollees?

Remember how Congressional Democrats & President Biden attempted to make the $35/mo insulin cap apply to ALL Americans as part of the defunct Build Back Better bill but had to settle for it only applying to the ~65 million on Medicare?

Well, guess what just happened? Via Rebecca Robins & Christine Hauser of the New York Times:

Last month I noted that the partisan COVID death rate gap, which had been shrunk down to almost nothing in December for the first time since COVID vaccines became widely available back in May 2021, had started to widen again:

Well, the lines didn't flip after all in January--the reddest quintile jumped up faster than the bluest quintile after all--two months earlier than I expected:

Bluest Quintile: 4.70 per 100K residents

Reddest Quintile: 5.33 per 100K residents (13% higher)

The January gap wasn't that significant by itself...except that it had looked like the rate in the reddest quintile might be lower last month.

Sure enough, the COVID death rate gap between the reddest and bluest fifths of the country widened out more in February, with the rate in the reddest quintile running 63% higher than the bluest quintile (4.22/100K vs. 2.39/100K). The rate actually dropped from January to February in every quintile, but it dropped considerably more in the bluest fifth (to the lowest rate since April 2022) than the reddest.

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), by email:

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the latest enrollment figures for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). These programs serve as key connectors to care for more millions of Americans.

Medicare

• As of November 2022, 65,372,781 people are enrolled in Medicare. This is an increase of 136,217 since the last report.

• 35,114,923 are enrolled in Original Medicare.

• 30,257,858 are enrolled in Medicare Advantage or other health plans. This includes enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans with and without prescription drug coverage.

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services:

Based on current COVID-19 trends, the Department of Health and Human Services is planning for the federal Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 (PHE), declared under Section 319 of the Public Health Service Act, to expire at the end of the day on May 11, 2023. Thanks to the Administration’s whole-of-government approach to combatting the virus, we are in a better place in our response than we were three years ago, and we can transition away from an emergency phase.

I'd never heard of Illinois state Senator Laura Fine before now. I know absolutely nothing else about her besides her being a Democrat who represents IL Senate District 9.

What I do know (thanks to a heads up from my friend & colleague Louise Norris) is that Sen. Fine recently introduced IL SB1912 into the legislative process:

As I noted a few weeks back, the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act now directly provides healthcare coverage for a stunning 40 million Americans:

...it's very likely that another 50,000 - 100,000 people will be added to the final QHP tally when the dust settles tomorrow (Tuesday, January 31st) evening. Even assuming the same 94% effectuation rate, that will still bring the effectuated QHP total to roughly 15.4 million.

Add to this the 1,217,517 confirmed Basic Health Plan (BHP) enrollees in New York and Minnesota and the subtotal comes to around 16.62 million QHPs + BHPs combined.

Next, we need to add Medicaid Expansion enrollees.

...the MBES reports only run through March 2022, at which point the national ACA expansion total stood at 22,275,433.

We're up to 38.9 million Americans with ACA coverage already, and we're still missing a lot of Medicaid expansion enrollees.

Updated 8/17/23: D'oh! I completely forgot about this development when I started running my state-by-state rate filing analyses this summer. No wonder Humana has disappeared from over a dozen states for 2024!

Update 3/15/23: At the request of Humana's Sales Integrity Dept., I've removed their logo from this blog entry.

Before I start, let me say that I've never been a fan of Medicare Advantage, at least as its currently structured, for a number of reasons. I am not advocating for the Medicare Advantage system--again, as currently structured--to be expanded.