Maryland

via the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange:

Maryland Health Connection will hold nearly 20 “Last Chance” events throughout the state during the final week of open enrollment Dec. 7-15 to provide free help enrolling in health coverage. Marylanders can enroll in health and dental coverage until Dec. 15 through Maryland Health Connection, the state’s health insurance marketplace.

At the free “Last Chance” events, certified health insurance navigators will help Marylanders sign up for a health plan and understand their coverage options and financial help available. Assistance also is available in Spanish.

Visit MarylandHealthConnection.gov or the Enroll MHC mobile app to browse plans, compare coverage and costs, and enroll.

The fall open enrollment is for private health and dental plans only. People who have coverage through Medicaid will receive a notice when it’s time to renew; enrollment for Medicaid is all year for eligible Marylanders.

via the Maryland Health Connection:

HEALTH PLAN RATES HAVE DROPPED; OPEN ENROLLMENT BEGINS NOV. 1

  • “START HERE” AT MARYLANDHEALTHCONNECTION.GOV

BALTIMORE (Oct. 30, 2019) - “Start Here” will be the theme for 2020 health care open enrollment season that begins Nov. 1 with Maryland Health Connection.

The “Start Here” campaign will appear on social media, print, online and other venues, including gas station TVs, to emphasize where Marylanders can go to enroll and use the free, expert advisers located throughout Maryland. A TV ad will run to complement the campaign.

Open enrollment begins on MarylandHealthConnection.gov at 5 a.m. on Nov. 1. Dec. 15 is the deadline to sign up for 2020 coverage that begins Jan. 1, 2020.

New this year, Value Plans feature lower deductibles and increased access to primary care, mental health care, and generic drugs before deductibles apply. Value plans are designed to lower consumers’ out-of-pocket costs for the health care services the majority of people use most frequently.

I'm not sure how this slipped by me, but in addition to Covered California already having launched their 2020 Open Enrollment Period yesterday, five other state-based ACA exchanges are already partly open as well. That is, you can shop around, compare prices on next year's health insurance policies and check and see what sort of financial assistance you may be eligible for:

I'm not sure when the other 7 state-based exchanges will launch their 2020 window shopping tools, nor do I know when HealthCare.Gov's window shopping will be open for the other 38 states, although I believe they usually do so about a week ahead of the official November 1st Open Enrollment Period launch date.

Back in May, Maryland was the very first state to publicly release their preliminary 2020 individual and small group market rate change requests. For 2019, thanks to several laws passed by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Hogan, including a robust ACA Section 1332 reinsurance waiver program, instead of increasing by another 30%, premiums dropped by 13.4% this year.

For 2020, the preliminary rates looked pretty good: Average rates were expected to drop by around 3% or so.

Well, today the Maryland Insurance Department announced the approved rates for 2020...and it's even better than that:

MLR rebate payments for 2018 are being sent out to enrollees even as I type this. The data for 2018 MLR rebates won't be officially posted for another month or so, but I've managed to acquire it early, and after a lot of number-crunching the data, I've recompiled it into an easy-to-read format.

But that's not all! In addition to the actual 2018 MLR rebates, I've gone one step further and have taken an early crack at trying to figure out what 2019 MLR rebates might end up looking like next year (for the Individual Market only). In order to do this, I had to make several very large assumptions:

Back in March, I wrote about a clever and absurdly simple (on the surface) bill being passed through the Maryland state legislature which could result in the state lowering their uninsured rate substantially...by as many as 120,000 people:

In early 2018, Maryland state legislators introduced a bill which included a twist on the coverage mandate penalty--those who failed to sign up had another option: They could either pay the penalty or they could choose to have the penalty amount be used to automatically enroll them in the lowest-cost insurance policy available. If they qualified for ACA subsidies, those would even be baked into the equation as well. This was a clever way of softening the blow, while also increasing enrollment and helping out the ACA risk pool.

Every year for 4 years running, I've spent the entire spring/summer/early fall painstakingly tracking every insurance carrier rate filing for the following year to determine just how much average insurance policy premiums on the individual market are projected to increase or decrease.

The actual work is difficult due to the ever-changing landscape as carriers jump in and out of the market, their tendency repeatedly revise their requests, and the confusing blizzard of actual filing forms which sometimes make it next to impossible to find the specific data I need.

The actual data I need to compile my estimates are actually fairly simple, however. I really only need three pieces of information for each carrier:

Since Congressional Republicans effectively repealed the ACA's individual mandate penalty at the federal level back in December 2017 (by reducing the penalty amount from $695 or 2.5% of income down to $0 or 0.0%), causing premiums on the individual market to shoot up an average of $580 per unsubsidized enrollee nationally, a half-dozen states or so have sprung into action.

Massachusetts, didn't really have to do much, since they never repealed their own state-level pre-ACA mandate penalty; they simply dusted it off and ramped up a statewide outreach/awareness campaign to make sure everyone knew it was still in place. Result: Record-breaking enrollment numbers and the lowest uninsured rate in the nation.

Last April, Maryland was one of several states which took action to counteract portions of the Trump Administration's attempts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. In particular, Maryland (which has a Democratically-controlled state legislature but a moderate (by today's standards) Republican Governor) passed and signed into two important bills:

The combined effect of these changes was dramatic: Maryland's individual market insurance carriers, which had been planning on jacking up their average premiums by a whopping 30%, instead ended up lowering their 2019 premiums by over 13%. This is a net swing of around $3,200 per enrollee for the year (around $266 per month). In other words, instead of seeing unsubsidized 2019 premiums go up by $2,200 apiece, they dropped around $1,000.

This makes the sixth state-based exchange in a row to post their 12/15 enrollment totals this afternoon...and it's the FIRST report of any sort to come out of Maryland. Fortunately, the news is quite good:

NEARLY 157,000 MARYLANDERS ENROLLED THROUGH MARYLAND HEALTH CONNECTION FOR 2019

Enrollments both on and off exchange exceeded estimates for how ‘reinsurance’ would stabilize Maryland’s individual insurance market

Oooh...now that's a treat for a data wonk like me...official off-exchange data is difficult to come by in most states...

BALTIMORE (DEC. 17, 2018) – A total of 156,963 Marylanders enrolled in private health coverage for 2019 during the open enrollment that concluded Saturday on Maryland Health Connection, the state-based health insurance marketplace.

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