A special session for Medicaid expansion will have to wait, Gov. Dennis Daugaard announced Wednesday.
After a weeks-long effort to lobby enough lawmakers to get the proposal approved in the Statehouse, Daugaard announced in a statement that he wouldn't call lawmakers back to Pierre.
Citing the upcoming presidential election that could result in substantial changes to the federal health insurance program for needy people, Daugaard said a special session was off the table.
“We have a good plan that would increase health care access at no additional state cost and guarantee that the federal government won’t shift its responsibility to pay for Native American health care to the state,” Daugaard said in a statement. “Still, I have heard from legislators that they would like more time to study this plan and in particular want to wait to consider the issue until after the presidential election. For that reason, I will not be calling a special session to take up this issue.”
The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, upheld by a vote of 5 to 4 the individual mandate to buy health insurance as a constitutional exercise of Congress's taxing power. A majority of the justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, agreed that the individual mandate was not a proper use of Congress's Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause powers, though they did not join in a single opinion. A majority of the justices also agreed that another challenged provision of the Act, a significant expansion of Medicaid, was not a valid exercise of Congress's spending power as it would coerce states to either accept the expansion or risk losing existing Medicaid funding.
UPDATE: This story has, thankfully, gone quite viral since I originally posted it yesterday morning. One important clarification: I estimated the monthly cost for treatment at around $5,200. According to Ms. Nichols in this local story about the situation in the Clarion-Ledger, the cost for her daughter’s treatment/medication is around $2,000; the balance appears to be for her husband, who also has diabetes. This actually makes the family more sympathetic, because she’s only asking for state assistance for her daughter’s portion of the bill.
In addition, according to the updated local story, the message appears to have gotten through to Rep. Guice (at least to the point that he's issued an apology, anyway):
Guice, who told The Clarion-Ledger Tuesday morning "I don't do interviews" and declined to comment, issued an apology Tuesday night.
1. Virtually all of those enrolled as of yesterday, a total of 189,000 by day's end, were transfers from existing limited-benefit public plans. These include 132,000 enrollees in Take Charge Plus, a program focused mainly on family planning, along with a few free office visits; and 56,000 from the Greater New Orleans Health Connection (GNOHC), a no-cost primary care program for low income people in the greater New Orleans area. GNOHC does not provide drug or hospital coverage.
...which is perfectly fine as well; it still lifts a huge financial burden off of the state while streamlining and consolidating enrollees into the larger Medicaid program itself.
Anyway, according to their latest report, when you add up the "effectuated enrollments WITH and WITHOUT APTC/CSR" (medical only), it totals 143,430 people as of June 9th, 2016...a slight drop from the 146,000 figure as of the end of April. As I noted last month, however:
I'm still waiting on the 2017 requested rate changes for Minnesota's individual market, but there's one carrier which won't be asking for any changes: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota:
Minnesota's largest health insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota has decided to stop selling health plans to individuals and families in Minnesota starting next year. The insurer explained extraordinary financial losses drove the decision.
"Based on current medical claim trends, Blue Cross is projecting a total loss of more than $500 million in the individual [health plan] segment over three years," BCBSM said in a statement.
The Blues reported a loss of $265 million on insurance operations from individual market plans in 2015. The insurer said claims for medical care far exceeded premium revenue for those plans.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the governor's office: Bevin's anti-Obamacare rhetoric started to tone down as Election Day approached. And in the months since he's been chief executive of Kentucky,instead of ripping up Obamacare out of his state, Bevin is making alterations to how the law works there and leaving its core elements and benefits in place.
My home state of Michigan has finally published the "Part II - Consumer Justification Narrative" carrier filings for 14 of the 15 carriers offering individual market plans next year. The combined total number of current enrollees comes in at around 390,000 including both on and off-exchange numbers. Last year, Michigan had 560,000 people on the ACA-compliant individual market, so it's important to note that there's likely at least 170,000 people missing from this analysis. However, many of these are likely found here:
UnitedHealthcare is pulling out of the MI market (unknown number of enrollees)
Celtic, Consumer's Mutual, HealthPlus and Time Insurance are all long gone
While I have the data for "Priority Health Plan", their counterpart, "Priority Health Insurance Co." has an unknown number of additional enrollees...and an unknown rate hike request (I don't know if it just hasn't been added to the database yet or what).
It should be noted, however, that last year, "Priority Health Insurance Co." had only about 1/10th as many enrollees as "Priority Health". If that ratio holds up this year, that should only be around 9,000 people, which is unlikely to skew the statewide average up or down by much.
With that in mind, here's how the requested hikes shake out in the Wolverine state for the bulk of indy market enrollees next year:
That's the subheadline of Jonathan Cohn & Jeffrey Young's story this morning about the kind-of, sort-of "replacement plan" for the ACA which Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have finally come up with, more than 6 years after the ACA was signed into law:
The plan, which isn’t legislation and is more like a mission statement, lacks the level of detail that would enable a full analysis, but one thing is clear: If put in place, it would almost surely mean fewer people with health insurance, fewer people getting financial assistance for their premiums or out-of-pocket costs, and fewer consumer protections than the ACA provides.
It’s difficult to be certain, because the proposal, which House Speaker Paul Ryan(R-Wis.) will talk up at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on Wednesday, lacks crucial information, like estimates of its costs and effects on how many people will have health coverage.
