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Tag: obamacare enrollment
Millions Could Lose Health Coverage When Medicaid Emergency Ends

Millions Could Lose Health Coverage When Medicaid Emergency Ends

According to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, somewhere between 5.3 million to 14.2 million low-income Americans could lose their Medicaid coverage if COVID public health emergency declarations expire on July 15.

The declaration is expected to be renewed, however, the KFF analysis points to the precarious health care faced by many Americans .

Medicaid enrollment increased by nearly 25 percent throughout the pandemic as the federal government implemented a continuous enrollment requirement. This cost $47.2 billion, but the federal government granted Medicaid about $100 billion to cover the costs related to continuous enrollment.

The wide estimate of 5.3-14.2 million Americans at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage is due to uncertainty over how individual states will respond to the looming end of the emergency declaration.

The Department of Health and Human Services has renewed the emergency declaration regularly throughout the pandemic, and HHS is required to provide a 60-day notice to states if the declaration will not be renewed. However, HHS has not yet set an extension date.

More Expensive Healthcare?

In addition to questions about how long continuous enrollment will keep Americans on Medicaid, the federal subsidies that reduced the price of marketplace health insurance could be gone at the end of 2022.

In tandem with increased Medicaid coverage, the federal government subsidized private insurance beyond what the ACA already does. If those additional subsidies end at the end of 2022, millions will likely see their monthly premiums increase.

Not only did Medicaid see an enrollment spike, but Obamacare enrollment reached its highest level ever during the pandemic at 14.5 million Americans. Enrollees received subsidized marketplace insurance as well as a longer enrollment period, and more public messaging was spent on ACA enrollment.

Some healthcare advocates have argued that the increased subsidies for marketplace insurance should remain in place when the public health emergency declaration and continuous enrollment for Medicaid are peeled back. People who lose Medicaid coverage would then have the option to enroll in the subsidized marketplace insurance.

The Build Back Better Act had a provision in place to decouple Medicaid continuous enrollment and subsidized marketplace insurance from COVID emergency measures. The legislation would extend subsidized insurance until 2025, but the bill is currently in legislative limbo after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin pulled his support in March.

What the Future Holds

Another renewal of the COVID emergency declaration would postpone worries of lost Medicaid coverage until mid-October, but many Americans will still be living in healthcare insecurity when the next deadline rolls around.

A lack of clarity about the future also puts healthcare workers, already facing long hours and staffing shortages, in a worrisome position, already facing long hours and staffing issues

Jana Eubank, executive director of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers told The Texas Tribune, “We already have a huge uninsured issue in this state, and this [the end of continuous Medicaid enrollment] just could be a perfect storm. We’re busting at the seams. … The last thing we need are more uninsured people.”

Americans living in red states face a particularly daunting task when acquiring healthcare. Texas has the highest number of uninsured people per capita and is one of the 12 states that has refused to expand access to Medicaid as part of the ACA. The other states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Individual states have considerable power over who can enroll in Medicaid, and their power is set to further expand in the realm of abortion rights after the leaked Supreme Court draft that would overturn Roe vs. Wade.

To expand access to healthcare in these states, some have proposed increasing the subsidies for marketplace insurance to include higher levels of income.

What remains clear in these debates is that a significant number of Americans are at risk of losing health insurance and more permanent action is needed to prevent an increase in the uninsured.

In Midterm Campaign, Bill Clinton Urges Democrats To Embrace Health Care Reform

In Midterm Campaign, Bill Clinton Urges Democrats To Embrace Health Care Reform

Defending the Affordable Care Act in his memorable nominating speech at the 2012 Democratic convention, Bill Clinton did as he often advises his party’s elected officials: Don’t run away from the argument; confront it directly instead. During his own political career, the former president has done both.

“When the president asked me to speak for him in North Carolina, I said that I would do it — but that I could only do it and be effective if he let me explain and defend the health care deal,” Clinton recalled this week, speaking not only about the 2012 election but the midterm campaign now underway.

“I thought that Democrats had a tendency to shy away from things they had done that were unpopular, [and] talk about positions they had that were popular. And that my own experience had convinced me — going back to ’94 and even more when I was governor — that that was always a terrible mistake. That you had to turn in toward all controversies and embrace them — even if you said you were wrong or a mistake was made. You couldn’t not deal with it.”

That is the opposite of current conventional Washington wisdom, which insists that Obamacare’s unpopularity will cost Democrats control of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. But the moment may have arrived when they will heed Clinton again –- because both public opinion data and the facts on the ground are taking a significant turn.

Polling on Obamacare has often been murky or misinterpreted over the past four years, with voters who wanted more radical reform counted as “opponents” along with those who want no change. Most surveys have indicated as well that many Americans simply don’t understand how Obamacare benefits them and their families – and that many change their view when reform’s real impact is explained without propaganda. For optimists at least, these data points always suggested that the tide of opinion would eventually turn.

The latest Kaiser Foundation Health Tracking Poll, released on March 26, offered evidence that this awaited shift is occurring, with well over half of respondents supporting the Act and less than a third urging its repeal. A strong majority of nearly 60 percent wants to keep the law as is or improve upon it, while only 29 percent want to repeal it altogether. Equally significant, from the politicians’ perspective, is that 53 percent say they are tired of listening to the debate – and that many aspects of the Act, from insurance subsidies and regulations to Medicaid expansion, preventive care, and the ability of young people to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26, are highly popular across party lines.

Major elements of Obamacare were popular all along, however, whether people understood its provisions or not. What revitalized the right-wing opposition to the law in recent months was a palpable sense that its implementation was failing – that like it or not, it wasn’t going to work. Embarrassing early operational failures and resistance from Republican governors and legislators made such prophecies of doom appear inevitable.

But suddenly, reform’s ruin no longer seems preordained. As the Obama administration and various experts predicted all along, the last several weeks of enrollment have seen a popular rush to sign up on the state and federal insurance exchanges. Days before the deadline of March 31, the White House announced that more than 6 million uninsured Americans had enrolled in qualified plans on the exchanges – more than the revised projections of the Congressional Budget Office.

By the end of the month, according to those tracking the numbers – notably Charles Gaba, the “numbers geek” whose ACASignups.net is well worth following – enrollment numbers will top 6.2 million.

Counting those who began to enroll before the deadline and will now have two additional weeks to finish, the final number should approach the administration’s original goal of 7 million. (Including every person who has signed up for private insurance or Medicaid, either within or outside the exchanges, Gaba estimates that ACA has encouraged at least 12.6 million Americans and possibly as many as 16.2 million to get covered – a major achievement.) And as people swarmed HealthCare.gov, they were signing up online without the infuriating glitch-and-crash epidemic that plagued the rollout last year.

What does this turnaround portend for November? Success for Obamacare might boost the turnout projections that Republicans have tried so hard to suppress and that Democrats have so far proved unable to resuscitate.

Dominant forces in the Republican Party – including the Tea Party and its billionaire financiers – have staked everything on the commonplace assumption that Obamacare will drag down Democrats across the country. Indeed, they make almost no other argument. Bolstering that cynical bet is the Democratic hesitation to mount a powerful counteroffensive on health care, with the impulse to push the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and other vital issues that still feel safer.

But as Clinton warns, they will find no shelter from this storm. They cannot hide from their own history; and the more they pretend to do so, the more they risk contempt. For decades, Democrats have insisted that all Americans must have health coverage — a momentous and admirable goal advanced by the Affordable Care Act.

With the numbers now on their side, they should lift their heads, raise their voices, and lean into the midterm debate. They have no better choice.

Obamacare Enrollment Continues To Rise In January

Obamacare Enrollment Continues To Rise In January

WASHINGTON — About 3 million people have now enrolled in health insurance plans sold through marketplaces created by President Barack Obama’s health law, the administration announced Friday.

The milestone indicates nearly a million additional people have signed up since the end of December. It also suggests that the marketplaces are continuing to recover from a disastrous launch on Oct. 1.

Administration officials expressed optimism Friday that enrollment would increase through the end of March, when the open enrollment period for 2014 coverage closes.

“As our outreach efforts kick into even higher gear, we anticipate these numbers will continue to grow, particularly as we reach even more uninsured young adults,” Medicare and Medicaid chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose agency is overseeing the rollout, said in a blog post.

The state-based marketplaces — a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare — were created so that Americans who do not get coverage at work could select among plans that offer at least a basic set of benefits and cannot turn away sick people.

Americans who make less than four times the federal poverty level — or about $94,000 for a family of four — qualify for government subsidies to offset the cost of their premiums.

Even with the rising enrollment, it is unclear if the administration will hit its target of 7 million enrollees this year. But most experts believe there will be another surge in March, as people rush to get insurance so they will not be hit with a penalty for not having coverage.

It also remains unclear how many of the new enrollees were previously uninsured and how many are healthy, key metrics that will determine the effectiveness of the new marketplaces. The Obama administration has not released this information.

LeDawna’s Pics via Flickr