Biden to reopen Obamacare enrollment
Affordable Care Act bolstered in pandemic; Durbin seeks to expand health workers
Joe Biden and Barack Obama speak at a ceremony formally announcing them as running mates at the Old State Capitol in Springfield in 2008. (Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Schwen)
By Ted Cox
President Biden plans to reopen enrollment for health plans under the Affordable Care Act as a way to bolster the nation’s health care in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Washington Post reported this week that the newly inaugurated president would most likely make the announcement Thursday. Health plans under the program commonly called Obamacare have an annual enrollment period running through November into December, but Biden is going to announce a new open enrollment period to get more Americans health coverage in the persistent pandemic.
That’s in marked contrast with the way former President Trump repeatedly tried to quash or end the Affordable Care Act, even in the face of COVID-19 last year. According to data released this month by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Obamacare enrollment was steady year to year in 2020 at 8.3 million nationally. But, given the pandemic and job losses due to the COVID economic collapse, one might well have expected it to rise, but for the obstruction of the Trump administration, and new enrollees did decline slightly, 3.6 percent, to 1.9 million. That meant 6.4 million people reenrolled in plans, including 291,000 Illinoisans overall who signed up for plans under the marketplace at healthcare.gov.
“That’s partly because employer-sponsored coverage didn’t decline as much as one might expect, given the job losses,” the Post reported. “While employment rates fell 6.2 percent from March to September, enrollment in workplace plans decreased by 1.5 percent over the same time period, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. One reason could be that losses were concentrated among lower-wage workers, who are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage to begin with.”
Thus, while Obamacare does allow workers who lose their jobs to enroll for a period after their employment, the open enrollment would also welcome those don’t have a workplace health-insurance option, especially now that it’s clear that the Biden administration will stand by the program.
When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, then-Vice President Biden was infamously overheard on a hot mike telling Obama, “This is a big (frigging) deal.” Biden also repeatedly reemphasized his commitment to expanding Obamacare last year on the campaign trail, and it’s one of the positions on issues that won him the Democratic nomination over other candidates pushing “Medicare for all.”
The Biden administration is expected to reopen enrollment for 30 or 45 days (the approximate time frame for the annual enrollment period) or perhaps extend it two months.
The Post quoted former Obama administration health-care staffer Joel Ario as saying, “The next few months will be tough, and keeping the marketplaces open for anyone who is uninsured will offer a critical safety net.”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin also announced new measures intended to take on the pandemic this week, as he joined U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in a bipartisan proposal to increase the number of health-care workers, especially in underserved areas. Their Strengthening America’s Health Care Readiness Act would allot a one-time, supplemental appropriation of $5 billion for scholarship and loan forgiveness awards through the National Health Service Corps, and $1 billion through the Nurse Corps program, “providing scholarship and loan-repayment funding for tens of thousands of clinicians in exchange for a service commitment in an urban or rural area with a shortage of providers,” according to a news release put out by Durbin’s office.
Through a 40 percent set-aside for racial and ethnic minorities and students from low-income urban or rural areas, it would also act to increase the number of minority physicians, nurses, and other health professionals. “A substantial barrier in meeting our nation’s health workforce needs is the student debt associated with graduate health education — which can average more than $200,000,” the release stated. “COVID-19 has also magnified alarming racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes, which can be partially addressed by expanding the representation of minority populations working in health careers. In 2019, only 6.4 percent of doctors in America identified as Black or Latinx, despite Black and Latinx Americans accounting for 31 percent of the nation’s total population.”
“Our health-care heroes continue to sacrifice under dire conditions on the front lines of our pandemic response,” Durbin said in a statement. “COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for a national policy that increases the number of health workers to address shortages, medical disparities, and respond to emergencies. The Strengthening America’s Health Care Readiness Act expands the NHSC, (National Disaster Medical System), and Nurse Corps programs, and I’m proud to partner with Sen. Rubio to boost our care capacity, especially in underserved communities.”