Maine weather disaster calls for longer ACA enrollment

Maine experienced a weather disaster whereby many people throughout the state were without electricity, caused by power lines entangled in severe tree damages. In fact, power outages in Maine reached about 400+ thousand. Many roads were blocked by downed power lines entangled in fallen trees.

This tree fell on Westwind Drive in Topsham Maine, where we live- L'Heureux photograph 

In Bangor, Senator Angus King Announced to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) a letter sent to the administer requesting an extension of open enrollment for Maine due to power loss following the October storm. King's announcement comes as he continues his Open Enrollment Information Tour at Penobscot Community Health Care.

BANGOR, ME – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) announced that he sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, to request an extension of the 2018 Affordable Care Act open enrollment period for Maine. 

The request comes following a severe storm caused more than 400,000 people in Maine to lose power as the shortened open enrollment period began.

“As you may know, a severe storm with hurricane-force winds recently hit Maine causing historic, widespread power outages,” Senator King wrote in the letter. “Without access to electricity and or communications it is nearly impossible to effectively shop for health insurance. Clearly, for those trying to enroll in healthcare, the timing of this event is dire. Because of the storm damage many Maine residents will lose nearly 1/3 of the Open Enrollment period… I respectfully ask that you consider extending the Open Enrollment period for the State of Maine to provide those recovering from the storm additional time to shop for health insurance coverage.”

Senator King announced the letter at Penobscot Community Health Care, where he continued his open enrollment information tour to provide information to Maine citizens about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment period. Open enrollment began on November 1st and currently stands to end on December 15th. The press conference featured health care professionals and advocates, application assisters, and health care providers.

In recent months, the Donald Trump Administration has launched numerous efforts to undermine open enrollment including reducing the length of open enrollment from 12 weeks to 6 weeks, announcing a 12-hour shutdown of the ACA website over weekends, and drastically cutting funding for advertising and insurance navigator programs. Despite these changes, the Affordable Care Act’s benefits and assistance with enrollment remain available for those who sign up within the shortened time period.

Senator King has been outspoken in his desire to improve the Affordable Care Act to protect coverage for the millions who rely on it for affordable healthcare, and is a cosponsor of the bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to stabilize the individual health insurance marketplace.

Today’s event marks the latest iteration of Senator King’s Open Enrollment information tour. In October, Senator King joined health care professionals and advocates at the Opportunity Alliance in South Portland to encourage Maine people to learn more about their health care options and get coverage, and in earlier this week he spoke about the importance of insurance at Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston. 

Senator King also hosted a Facebook live on the topic where he shared a personal story about how insurance saved his life more than 40 years ago, when he was diagnosed with skin cancer (Melanoma).

This is a compassionate and reasonable request from Senator King, made on behalf of all Maine people who were unable to access the Internet during the weather related computer interruptions and loss of electricity.  Thank you Senator King.

Trump's change - health care in the vice

In his campaign promise to "make American great again" Donald Trump didn't explain how his slogan would replace what he wrongly and rehtorically screeched about the evils of the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare". Well, now the orthopedic physician, Congressman Tom Price M.D., who Trump is putting in charge of the important Health and Human Services department and who will sit on his cabinet, will likely be sure to see his peers get a big raise, in referrals. Physicians will feel empowered again, as many of them felt disenfranchised by the ACA. One way the Obamacare coverage provided for at least some affordability was to limit unnecessary surgeries, like some orthopedic procedures. It's simply impossible to explain how it is that a nation as wealthy as the United States can restrict anyone- anyone at all- from access to health care!

Of course, the biggest losers of all under the "make America great again" rubric will be the poor people, those who need and depend on Medicaid assistance. (Ironically, many of these people were wrong minded Trump supporters.) Those not mentioned in this New York Times article (below) are the people who depend on long term care assistance, the disabled and children born in poverty or who live in foster care, to name a few. Moreover, what will happen when, inevitably, the lack of access to care, due to new rules, causes another outbreak of infectious diseases, like either "bird flu" (H1N1) or tuberculosis?

PUBLIC HEALTH- published in The New York Times
A Trump Pick, and Why Indiana’s Strict Medicaid Rules Could Spread- by Margaret Sanger-Katz

In most of the United States, anyone poor enough to qualify for Medicaid simply receives whatever care doctors recommend at minimal cost. But many Medicaid enrollees in Indiana can’t get full benefits unless they pay monthly premiums, and some who fail to pay can be shut out of coverage entirely for six months. If they go to the emergency room too often, they have to pay a fee.

These provisions were unprecedented departures for the program last year, and they were negotiated with federal health officials by Seema Verma, a consultant, on behalf of Gov. Mike Pence, now the vice president-elect. 

This week Donald J. Trump chose Ms. Verma to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the influential agency inside the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Medicare, Medicaid and the Obamacare insurance markets.

It is not clear what Ms. Verma may have planned for Medicare, a fully federal program that covers millions of older Americans and that usually makes up most of the administrator’s job. Administrators of the agency typically come with some Medicare experience, and Ms. Verma appears to have little.

Her policy priorities for Medicaid are much clearer. Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and to create new systems for providing health insurance to low and middle-income Americans. But even without legislation, the executive branch can do a lot to reshape existing programs by giving states more power. Ms. Verma’s nomination suggests that the administration will become much more enthusiastic about approving novel Medicaid policies like those adopted in Indiana.

The Healthy Indiana Plan, as it’s known, “has been successful in meeting its policy objectives, but it also continues to demonstrate the potential for consumer-driven health care as an alternative to the traditional Medicaid model,” Ms. Verma wrote in an article in the journal Health Affairs this summer, arguing that other states should adopt its provisions. (An employee of her consulting firm said Ms. Verma was not doing interviews or answering questions.)
(Too bad Ms. Verma isn't available to answer the questions about the beneficiaries of long term care, the disabled, children in foster care or others who are too poor to advocate for themselves.)

The Medicaid statute allows states to throw out many, but not all, program rules to test whether they can deliver better care to Medicaid patients at a similar cost. The bright lines about which rules can be waived are often decided in court.

The Obama administration has been open to new ideas in Medicaid, in part because it has wanted to encourage Republican-led states to expand coverage to more of their residents. It has allowed major policy experiments in Arkansas and Iowa, but the Indiana plan pushed the furthest in requiring beneficiaries to spend their own money and follow complex rules to continue receiving full benefits.

Other changes to Medicaid long favored by Republican state officials, like requirements that applicants work to obtain benefits, could also be approved. The Obama administration has argued that such requirements violate the Medicaid statute.

Republican state officials argue that such rules help beneficiaries take a greater stake in their own health and help them learn the value of their benefits.

“When things aren’t completely free, people begin to make more careful decisions about how and how much to consume,” said Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor, who worked with Ms. Verma on an early version of the plan. Mr. Daniels, now the president of Purdue University, praised her as an “indispensible technician” for her efforts in devising the proposal.

Analysts have criticized the Indiana program, saying that there hasn’t been good evidence that beneficiaries understood the incentive structure or changed their behavior because of it. They have also raised concerns that the program is complex and hard to manage — that the cost of collecting small premiums exceeds the revenue the state receives. Judith Solomon, the vice president for health policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the state had not cooperated with efforts to independently evaluate the program.

At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Ms. Verma could also encourage large changes in middle-class coverage. A provision in the Affordable Care Act allows states to replace traditional Medicaid and the Obamacare insurance marketplaces with a different system if it can be demonstrated that the plan would cover a similar number of people at a similar cost. The provision was envisioned as a way to allow liberal states to pursue single-payer systems. But health policy experts believe it could also be used to reshape many of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance market rules.

“The Affordable Care Act really federalized the health insurance market, so now we can decentralize that again, bring that authority back to the states in determining what benefits are,” said Dennis Smith, a former federal director of Medicaid in the Bush administration, who has also run the Wisconsin Medicaid program. He is now working for the Medicaid agency in Arkansas.

Other Medicaid experts worry about new barriers to health care, if the Trump administration approves plans that Obama administration officials have blocked.

“We can expect to see far-reaching changes contemplated for Medicaid that will erect many more barriers to coverage — and very punitive barriers,” said Joan Alker, the executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, in an email. “For example, forcing people to remain uninsured for up to year if they miss a paperwork deadline or a premium payment, even though we know that conditions like mental illness or homelessness — or something more simple like a notice getting lost in the mail — may explain the missed deadline.”

But experts across the political spectrum agree: Ms. Verma’s appointment will probably usher in a new era of state flexibility in health care.

(Certainly, the poor are in the vice again as making American great again will obviously be challenging for the poor who need health care coverage.  It appears to be the case that the wealthiest nation on earth will not make providing health care for the poor a national priority.)

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