• 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.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Their freedom requires your slavery.

People are complicated. Love is not.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Idaho’s lubrication for ACA enrollment

Idaho’s lubrication for ACA enrollment

by David Anderson|  April 15, 20207:08 am| 8 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, COVID-19 Coronavirus

FacebookTweetEmail

Idaho is an odd state for health insurance.  It is a conservative state with a Republican trifecta.  It has reluctantly expanded Medicaid through a voter referandum.  It has moderately regulated short term limited duration plans.  And it runs a state based exchange.  They are the only state based marketplace that has not created a Special Enrollment Period (SEP) that is explicitly designed to catch folks that are currently unemployed and uninsured to go to the ACA marketplaces.  Healthcare.gov also does not have a special COVID SEP.  The standard loss of insurance SEP is active but it has lots of administrative friction and paperwork requirements.

However, Idaho is seeking to  minimize administrative friction:

Idahoans who have lost employer-sponsored health insurance as a result of termination, layoff, or furlough due to COVID-19 are eligible for a Special Enrollment Period. Previously this process would require several steps of documentation and validation. Under the newly relaxed policy, in lieu of documentation and proof of termination, Idahoans can now submit a written statement explaining their loss of employer health benefits. This new process removes time-consuming barriers and ensures an expedited path to coverage.

We are getting a massive lesson in administrative burden and administrative friction in the delivery of public benefits.  Public benefits can be readily and easily available.  Public benefits can be legally available and “accessible” after jumping through a lot of hoops.  If a public benefit is easy to access, then lots of people will use the public benefit.  If a public benefit is difficult to access, not many people will use that benefit.  And the people who get a hard to receive benefit tend to be systemically different than folks who are blocked from access by paperwork barriers. 

This applies to food stamps. 

This applies to voting. 

This applies to Medicaid. 

This applies to college financial aid. 

And it applies to to ACA special enrollment periods as well.

Idaho’s removal of a documentation requirement and replacing it with an attestation dramatically reduces the administrative burden for people who have lost insurance.  This is a good step to increase enrollment and provide some financial protection for folks who have gotten hit hard right now.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Recreate the Beauty You Want to See in the World
Next Post: COVID and IBNR in rate settings »

Reader Interactions

8Comments

  1. 1.

    Lacuna Synechdoche

    April 15, 2020 at 7:59 am

    I had a dream this morning where I was giving Donald Trump the finger, up close and personal, right in his jowly, corrupt, overly made-up, fat fucking face.

    Sigh. Even in my dreams I’m giving Donald Trump the finger. Is there no respite?

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    April 15, 2020 at 8:13 am

    We all know Republicans will sabotage any good works by putting more and more hurdles in front of people. Excellent point!

  3. 3.

    Gary Ratner

    April 15, 2020 at 8:45 am

    Public goods benefits?

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 15, 2020 at 8:49 am

    I guess Republican’s in Idaho vote.

  5. 5.

    David Anderson

    April 15, 2020 at 9:32 am

    @Gary Ratner: Good catch; updated!

  6. 6.

    dfh

    April 15, 2020 at 10:10 am

    I think you’ve created a Universal Hoops Theory, David. I wish more people could see how the UHT stifles *some* members of the public, and rise up to change the conditions. Thank you.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    April 15, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    About a hundred years ago Idaho was actually a hotbed of union activism based around their mining activities. The biggest change was shifting their economic focus from resource extraction to agriculture and tourism. Then Boise suddenly started going purple then blue and a whole bunch of white resentment hit the hinterlands. Yet Idahoans do have a better tendency to look out for each other. I’m not terribly surprised they’re being actually competent here.

  8. 8.

    Julie

    April 15, 2020 at 9:38 pm

    Reminds me of the term “ordeal mechanisms” used by Jonathan Gruber in his Public Finance textbook.

    “Ordeal mechanisms – giving welfare programs undesirable properties so that only those who really need them will choose to use them. If the goal is to redistribute money to the less able, the welfare program could be endowed with features that make it unattractive to the more able.”

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • zhena gogolia on Good News Open Thread: That’s A Big Boy (Mar 31, 2023 @ 6:12pm)
  • Quiltingfool on Happy Trans Day of Visibility! (Mar 31, 2023 @ 6:12pm)
  • Geminid on Good News Open Thread: That’s A Big Boy (Mar 31, 2023 @ 6:11pm)
  • schrodingers_cat on Good News Open Thread: That’s A Big Boy (Mar 31, 2023 @ 6:11pm)
  • StringOnAStick on Open Thread (Anyone Up for a Balloon Juice Zoom on Saturday Evening?) (Mar 31, 2023 @ 6:11pm)

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Seattle Meetup coming up on April 4!

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Classified Documents: A Primer
State & Local Elections Discussion

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

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

Email sent!