Showing posts with label Medicaid 5-year bar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medicaid 5-year bar. Show all posts

Saturday, February 06, 2016

CMS Open Enrollment error in New York (updated, with CMS correction)

[Update 2/11/16: CMS has made  a correction -- see below.]

CMS's ACA enrollment snapshot for the final week of Open Enrollment 2016 contains an error, bolded below:
It is also worth noting that nearly 400,000 people signed up for New York’s new Basic Health Program, along with about 33,000 people who signed up for Minnesota’s Basic Health Program, during this Open Enrollment. Basic Health Programs are state based programs supported by the Affordable Care Act that provide health insurance coverage to low income individuals who would generally otherwise be eligible for qualified health plans [QHPs]. In fact, about 300,000 of the New York Basic Health Program enrollees for 2016 are people who enrolled in Marketplace coverage for 2015 and were included in last year’s Marketplace total plan selections.
Enrollees in New York's Essential Plan, the BHP formed under the auspices of  the ACA, come from two pools. The first is those who lack access to employer-sponsored plans and have incomes between 139% and 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). If the Essential Plan did not exist, these people would be eligible for subsidized QHPs in New York's private marketplace. Some of them were in fact enrolled in QHPs in 2015, but not 300,000.