Yesterday evening, SottoVoce posted a diary giving me a nice shout-out for being mentioned by Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo.
I wanted to thank SottoVoce (and those in the comments) for the kind words, as well as to those who are chipping in a few bucks to help me continue the ACA Signups project. I did want to reiterate some comments I made myself:
There is one point I need to straighten out: Rugbymom below stated that I “quit my day job to maintain/update the ACA Signups site/project. I appreciate the support, but just to clarify, this is only half true. I still operate Brainwrap Web Design with my wife, but business has suffered quite a bit; I’ve spent three+ years trying to keep on top of both, and haven’t always been successful at it, so I’ve lost a number of clients along the way, so I definitely appreciate any financial support folks are able to pony up.
Every spring for 4 years now, I’ve been right on the verge of closing up shop on the ACA project...and every year I’m convinced to keep it going. This year I really intended on shutting it down right about now; I assumed that with Hillary Clinton as President, the drama surrounding the ACA would finally subside and interest in the day-to-day minutiae would drop off substantially. After all, no one breathlessly tracks the number of Medicare enrollees on a daily basis. I assumed that the ACA would finally have sunk into the national economy & consciousness, and that new developments wouldn’t be that much more of interest than, say, the weekly Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Obviously things didn’t work out that way.
Instead, I’ve found that traffic to the site has actually increased substantially since last fall, for obvious, and mainly tragic reasons.
Anyway, thanks again so much for this. I’ll keep the ACA Signups project shlepping along for as long as I can and as long as there’s a need for it.
Oh, and speaking of RugbyMom...I should also give a shout-out to her and about two dozen other dKos regulars who helped me launch the ACA Signups project right here at dKos 3 ½ years ago. My original idea was to get 50 dKos members (one from each state) to help me out with crowdsourcing enrollment data/etc. It didn’t quite work out that way, but a couple dozen folks did volunteer to help out in those early days, including RugbyMom.
For what it’s worth, here’s the diary and passage which inspired ACASignups.net, posted on October 11, 2013, in the middle of HealthCare.Gov’s technical meltdown during it’s first month of operation:
Seriously, though, HHS should really start releasing the official (accurate) numbers of actual signups for all 50 states (or at the very least, the 36 states that they're responsible for) on a daily--or at least, weekly--basis. I don't care if it's a pitifully small number. 100,000? 10,000? 100? 10? Even if it's in single digits, release the damned numbers. Be upfront about it. Everyone knows by now how f*** up the website is, so be honest and just give out the accurate numbers as they come in.
Besides, that'll make it all the more impressive when those numbers start to (hopefully) skyrocket over the next 2 1/2 months.
Oh, and for the record:
- On October 1, 2013, HealthCare.Gov enrolled exactly six people.
- On December 15, 2016, HealthCare.Gov enrolled 670,000 people.
Also, someone expressed concern about the ACA Signups site not having a SSL certificate (which I plan on adding soon). Fear not; the actual transaction is handled via a secure server:
- via PayPal: When you go to check out, you’ll be taken off the ACA site over to PayPal’s secure server.
- via GoFundMe: This takes you directly to the GoFundMe page (also a secure server).
OK, the other thing I wanted to note is that the CBO is expected to release their score of the new version of the AHCA...the one which the GOP actually voted to pass. It’s very important to note that this version is similar to the two prior versions (both of which the CBO gave horrible scores to), but also includes a couple of important differences which make the AHCA even worse in some ways.
As a reminder: If signed into law, the AHCA would (courtesy of Steve Anderson of healthinsurance.org):
- The bill eliminates protections for those with pre-existing conditions. (Slate)
- It makes essential health benefits optional. (Vox)
- The bill would slash $880 billion from Medicaid (Politico) and punishes the working poor. (Vox)
- Millions are projected to lose coverage under the bill. (New York Times)
- The AHCA still includes an exemption for members of Congress. (Vox)
- The bill would eliminate Obamacare’s community rating provision. (Wendell Potter)
- The high-risk pools in the AHCA won’t be funded adequately to actually cover folks with pre-existing conditions. (Avelere)
- Republicans rushed to pass the bill. (New York Times)
- The GOP is voted on the bill even though it hasn’t been scored yet by the Congressional Budget office. (Vox)
- A brand new reason – that thanks to a little-known provision of the AHCA, the people who get health insurance through their employers could stand to lose ACA protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses. (Wall Street Journal)
- Americans would lose coverage in all 435 Congressional districts.
- The bill looks like an attack on women’s health – including defunding Planned Parenthood.
Who stands to lose coverage?
- People with pre-existing conditions. Find out how many in YOUR Congressional district. (acasignups.net)
- Everyone? Everywhere? (Families USA)
The main differences in the new version are:
- 1. It allows states to opt out of pre-existing & community rating protections, meaning they can opt to charge insane amounts to people with pre-existing conditions if they wish, and…
- 2. It tacks on an extra $8 billion over 5 years to (supposedly) go towards High Risk Pools to help cover those denied coverage due to #1 (and not one dime after 5 years).
Once again, that $8 billion isn’t remotely enough to cover those expenses, even if only a fraction of the states actually put in for the waiver...and it already looks like Wisconsin and Texas are champing at the bit to do so.
Personally, I predict the following states would be very likely to do so:
- AL, FL, GA, KS, MS, MO, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, WI, WY
I took the 19 states which didn’t expand Medicaid, subtracted VA & NC because they have Democratic Governors who are trying to expand, subtracted Maine because they have a reasonable legislature even if their governor is insane, and Idaho because, well, they’re a special case which I won’t get into right now.
HOWEVER, getting back to the new CBO score coming soon:
It’s very important to remember that, as Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation noted, they may very well lower their estimate of 24 million losing health insurance under the version voted on last week...because by weakening/stripping coverage strength, premiums will likely go down somewhat for most people. HOWEVER...
UPDATE: One other thing about the CBO score: One of the reasons that it’s taking so long for them to score this version of the AHCA is that the waiver amendment is optional for each state. That means the CBO has no way of knowing how many or which states would actually put in for such a waiver, and therefore has no way of knowing how many people would be impacted, even if they know how many in each state have such conditions.
It’s also important to know that any such waivers would be automatically approved unless HHS Sec. Tom Price actively denies them, meaning he doesn’t even have to get his hands dirty by bothering to read or review the request; he can literally do nothing and they’ll be approved.
I’m not sure how long the waivers last before having to be re-authorized...a year? Five years?
Finally, consider this: The GOP is trying to claim that the missing CBO score “doesn’t matter” because hey, the CBO already scored two earlier versions of the bill! Which is idiotic for two reasons:
- 1: The earlier CBO scores were horrible
- 2: Since the only changes in the new version are the waivers and $8B extra, they’re saying that even if NONE of the states ask for a waiver, the AHCA would ”only” be as horrible as the earlier version.