• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The house always wins.

Let there be snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Verified, but limited!

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Mission Accomplished!

The willow is too close to the house.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

Too inconsequential to be sued

Naturally gregarious and alpha

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

This really is a full service blog.

Mobile Menu

  • Look Forward & Back
  • Balloon Juice 2021 Pet Calendar
  • Site Feedback
  • All 2020 Fundraising
  • I Voted!
  • Take Action: Things We Can Do
  • Team Claire, and Family
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • BJ PayPal Donations
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Nature & Respite
  • Information As Power
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • On The Road
  • Garden Chats
  • Nature & Respite
  • Look Forward & Back
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Preparing for 2021

Preparing for 2021

by David Anderson|  October 4, 20187:32 am| 7 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Meth Laboratories of Democracy

Facebook0Tweet0Email0

New Mexico is preparing for an ambitious future for health policy. Louise Norris notes that New Mexico is looking to move off of Healthcare.gov and open up their own state based exchange.

In order to reduce user fees, the exchange board considered the issue during a September 2018 board meeting, and voted unanimously to transition to a fully state-run exchange in time for the 2021 plan year.

The exchange will put out a request for proposals in early 2019, as they work to find a vendor to create their state-run enrollment platform. The system will be live by the fall of 2020, in time for the open enrollment period for 2021 coverage (November-December 2020).

There are two good reasons to go down this path. The first is the obvious one: it’s cheaper than using Healthcare.gov. Healthcare.gov charges 3.5% of premium as an Exchange fee for states that don’t do anything on their own, and a 3.0% of premium Exchange fee for states that manage significant elements of the enrollment process. New Mexico is one of the “partnership” states that uses the Healthcare.gov front-end but manages a lot of their own back-end. 3.0% of premium is not a good deal. The same fee level would either be used to fund significantly more outreach, advertising and navigators or the same level of outreach and support that Healthcare.gov provides could be funded at a much lower fee which would slightly reduce baseline premiums.

Secondly, New Mexico is getting ambitious. They are the leading innovators in doing the actual hard work of figuring out how a Medicaid buy-in proposal. This would be effectively a state based public option. This would be a major rejiggering of the New Mexico individual market.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has repeatedly stated under both the Obama and the Trump administrations that they can’t do much with the back-end of Healthcare.gov to support unusual or aggressive waiver requests. If New Mexico moves towards a Medicaid buy-in model, their open enrollment, subsidy structure and eligibility structures would be unique. The only way that can work within an Exchange framework is if New Mexico can customize the exchange that their citizens and residents see.

So, this is both an effort to reduce premiums through either attracting a healthier risk pool or lower costs of attracting the current risk pool AND a necessary step in building the infrastructure to support a Medicaid buy-in program.

Facebook0Tweet0Email0
Previous Post: « Thursday Morning Open Thread: … There Is Always Vengeance
Next Post: Coequal My Ass »

Reader Interactions

7Comments

  1. 1.

    Cheryl Rofer

    October 4, 2018 at 8:37 am

    Proud of my state. We’ve been ahead of the curve in a lot of things.

  2. 2.

    JGabriel

    October 4, 2018 at 8:44 am

    I’m impressed. Keep up the good work, New Mexico.

  3. 3.

    MomSense

    October 4, 2018 at 8:48 am

    Meanwhile in Maine we can’t even get Medicaid expansion even after passing a citizens referendum.

  4. 4.

    Eric S.

    October 4, 2018 at 8:56 am

    Good on NM!

    I’ll just say that as 20+ year IT professional that has spent a fair amount of time working with a different state government, I have a gut reaction their timeline is aggressive. Counter point to myself, my own state of Illinois is infamous for their inefficiencies and I’ve not done web development on any scale. I know there are other IT people among the jackals. What do you think?

  5. 5.

    Alain the site fixer

    October 4, 2018 at 8:57 am

    test

  6. 6.

    David Anderson

    October 4, 2018 at 9:09 am

    @Eric S.: My opinion is that the timeline is plausible given other state based exchanges that have bought the code base and maintainers of other state based exchanges that work well. IIRC Connecticut’s code base is being used for the DC exchange and there are a couple of other “Exchanges in a Box” offerings that have been deployed and the dumbest bugs have been worked out.

  7. 7.

    Aziz, light!

    October 4, 2018 at 8:29 pm

    Testing. Testing. Is this thing on?

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Guest Posts: Priorities

Kakistocracy
I believe In My Fellow Americans
Defeat Them
Turning Bystanders Into Activists
UFOs and Officers
First Up, COVID
Idiots and Maniacs
Our National Illness
Libraries
You Have One Job

Do Something!

Call Your Senators & Representatives
Directory of US Senators
Directory of US Representatives
Letter to Elected Officials – Albatrossity
Letter to Elected Officials – Martin

I Got the Shot!

🎈Ways to Support Our Site

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal
Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice ⬇  

Recent Comments

  • J R in WV on On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 2 (Jan 27, 2021 @ 12:28pm)
  • Brachiator on Tax It Back (Jan 27, 2021 @ 12:28pm)
  • Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes on GME YOLO (Jan 27, 2021 @ 12:28pm)
  • hueyplong on GME YOLO (Jan 27, 2021 @ 12:27pm)
  • Another Scott on GME YOLO (Jan 27, 2021 @ 12:27pm)

Team Claire, and Family

Help for David’s Niece Claire
Claire Updates
Claire update for the holidays 12/23

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year

Featuring

John Cole
Silverman on Security
COVID-19 Coronavirus
Medium Cool with BGinCHI
Information Is Power

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Submit Photos to On the Road
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Meetups: Proof of Life
2021 Pets of Balloon Juice Calendar

Culture: Books, Film, TV, Music, Games, Podcasts

Noir: Favorites in Film, Books, TV
Book Recommendations & Indy Recs
Mystery Recommendations
Medium Cool: What If (Books & Films)
Netflix Favorites
Amazon Prime Favorites
Netflix Suggestions in July
Fun Music Thread
Longmire & Netflix Suggestions
Medium Cool: Places!
Medium Cool: Games!
Medium Cool: Watch or Read Again

Twitter

John Cole’s Twitter

[custom-twitter-feeds]

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!