On the other hand, well, at least if women manage to survive childbirth, they & their newborn baby will have Medicaid coverage for a full year in the future. Via the Austin American-Statesman:
Texas mothers are one step closer to getting health coverage for 12 months following pregnancy.
This week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved Texas' plan to provide 12 months of postpartum health care coverage through Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program instead of the current 60 days. Those programs are for people who qualify based on income. The extended coverage will begin March 1.
Back in September, Inside Health Policy reporter Dorothy Mills-Gregg checked in on "Georgia Pathways," the Peach State's new program which partially expands Medicaid to residents earning up to 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), but with a rather significant string attached: Work reporting requirements:
...in spite of nearly every state which tried to (or succeeded in) implement Medicaid work requirements having their programs shut down by the courts, one state's work/reporting managed to survive: Georgia. As explained in the Kaiser article:
The Department, through CMS, will launch a new effort to support patients, hospitals, and providers to help ensure access to emergency health care
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that, together with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), it will launch a series of actions to educate the public about their rights to emergency medical care and to help support efforts of hospitals to meet their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). As part of this comprehensive plan, the Department will:
It was just 53 days ago that North Carolina became the 40th state (plus DC & the U.S. territories) to fully expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. At the time, around 600,000 lower-income North Carolinians were estimated to be eligible for the public healthcare program.
So where do things stand now? Well, the NC government has posted a handy Medicaid enrollment dashboard which is tracking the data as once a month; the most recent update was on January 12th:
NC Medicaid Expansion Enrollment as of January 12th, 2024: 314,101
The dashboard has some nifty interactive tools letting. you filter enrollees out by plan, age bracket, gender, ethnicity, urban/rural status and county, along with enrollment trends.
To say the topic of student loan program debt forgiveness has gotten a lot of attention in recent years would certainly be an understatement. Plenty of debate has been completed on both sides of the issue, with no real resolution anywhere in sight. In Hawaii, however, some action has been taken with the goal of both helping healthcare workers and also strengthening the healthcare system for residents of the 50th state.
In order to provide the funds needed to help healthcare workers pay off student loan debt that was incurred, this program is going to use a blend of state and private funding. As a starting point, $30 million will be provided by the state and an additional $5 million is going to be contributed by the CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff.
On Jan. 1, immigrants may qualify for Medi-Cal regardless of legal status
...Milagro and her husband are among the more than 700,000 immigrants ages 26-49 expected to newly qualify for full health insurance come Jan. 1. That’s when California takes the final step in opening up Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for low-income residents, to everyone who meets eligibility requirements, regardless of their immigration status.
This is about as minor of an enrollment update as it gets, but for what it's worth, the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority posted this update a couple of weeks ago:
DC HEALTH BENEFIT EXCHANGE AUTHORITY Enrollment Summary
As of January 4th, 2024
INDIVIDUAL ENROLLMENT
Current Enrollment: 14,248
Enrollment 1 Year Ago: 13,941
CHANGE: +307
...we could now be looking at anywhere from 21.4 - 22.7 million QHPs, for a grand total of somewhere between 22.7 - 24.0M QHPs+BHPs combined by the time the dust settles in every state on January 1st. I'll stick with 23M for the moment just in case...
A week later, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted their final pre-deadline Open Enrollment Snapshot Report, which confirmed that over 20.3 million people had selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through December 23rd.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of the Health Insurance Marketplace (OHIM) will release biweekly updates on plan selections through CoverME.gov, Maine’s Health Insurance Marketplace.
Plan selections provide a snapshot of activity by new and returning consumers who have selected a plan for 2024. “Plan selections” become “enrollments” once consumers have paid their first monthly premium to begin insurance. These numbers are subject to change as consumers may modify or cancel plans after their initial selection.
The deadline to select a plan for coverage beginning January 1, 2024 is December 15, 2023. Consumers who select a plan between December 16, 2023 and January 16, 2024 will have coverage beginning February 1, 2024.
