1. DON'T MISS THE DEADLINE! In most states you have until December 15th to #GetCovered, but 10 states have a later deadline:
CA: Jan. 31
CO: Jan. 15
DC: Jan. 31
MA: Jan. 23
MN: Dec. 22
NV: Jan. 15
NJ: Jan. 31
NY: Jan. 31
PA: Jan. 15
RI: Jan. 23
2. MAKE SURE YOU ENROLL IN AN ACA-COMPLIANT PLAN! Use the official ACA exchange or an *authorized* 3rd-party site *which only sells ACA-compliant plans*!
3. THE MANDATE PENALTY IS STILL AROUND IN 4 STATES +DC!
The federal penalty may be gone, but CALIFORNIA, DC, MASSACHUSETTS, NEW JERSEY and RHODE ISLAND charge their own financial penalty for those who don't #GetCovered (unless they have an exemption).
4. YOU MAY QUALIFY FOR TAX CREDITS IN 2021 EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T IN 2020...WHICH COULD SAVE YOU THOUSANDS!
The federal poverty level increases $1,080 for single adults & $1,800 for a family of 4 next year, so more people could qualify for up to thousands of dollars in savings.
5. RESIDENTS OF 4 STATES MAY QUALIFY FOR *ADDITIONAL* SAVINGS!
VT & MA have extra savings to those earning <300% FPL.
CA offers extra subsidies to those earning 200-400% FPL & expanded subsidies to those earning 400-600% FPL.
NJ is offering savings to *all* exchange enrollees.
6. THANKS TO "SILVER LOADING", SOME PEOPLE QUALIFY FOR ZERO-PREMIUM BRONZE PLANS...OR EVEN ZERO-PREMIUM *GOLD* PLANS!
It's a long, stupid story, but the bottom line is that due to the complex way ACA subsidies are calculated, millions qualify for dirt-cheap ACA policies.
7. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO *NOT* LET YOURSELF BE "PASSIVELY" AUTO-RENEWED.
Some policy details, premiums, tax credits etc. change dramatically from year to year even if your own situation is the same (and many people's situations have changed dramatically lately). SHOP AROUND.
ONE MORE THING: Don't let the #TexasFoldem lawsuit (CA v. TX) scare you off of making sure to #GetCovered!
1. There's no way of knowing how they'll rule--there's a good chance SCOTUS will rule against the plaintiffs or will make a small change which doesn't impact anything else.
2. There's a chance that Democrats will be able to render the entire case moot by passing a simple bill to save the law long before SCOTUS issues their ruling anyway.
3. There's a chance SCOTUS would kick the case back down the line again & it'll bounce around for years.
4. There's a (small) chance SCOTUS would issue a stay of their own order until 2022.
5. EVEN IN A WORST-CASE SCENARIO, the decision isn't expected until April, May or June 2021. Even 4-6 months of coverage is still better than zero months of coverage, especially in a pandemic!
SPEAKING OF THE LAWSUIT, here's my write-up about how the oral arguments went before the #SCOTUS on Nov. 10th.
Short version: It *seemed* to go pretty well for the defense & poorly for the plaintiffs...but that doesn't guarantee anything: acasignups.net/20/11/10/texas…
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Again: Giving him side-eye or the evil eye or whatever isn’t gonna change the fact that he’s gonna have tremendous power over the Dem Senate caucus even if they flip both GA seats.
For all the "progressive v. moderate" bickering re. downballot, in the end, Democrats managed to get 12 million MORE people out there to vote for Biden than Hillary. We GOTV.
The REAL problem is Republicans *also* managed to get nearly 10 million more *Trump* voters out there.
For decades the assumption has been that of the ~40% of American non-voters, most of them were Democrats, so all we had to do is increase turnout as much as possible and voila.
The reality is more complicated--large chunks of them vote Dem...but large chunks also vote GOP.
Even if it's true, "just ramp up turnout" doesn't necessarily guarantee success.
Let's say there's ~100M who don't generally vote. Let's say that 60M are Dem ideologically.
If so, that means this year Dems turned out 20% of their chunk but the GOP turned out 25% of theirs.
...which is why the infighting between moderates and the far-left seems overstated. Aside from the “defund” wording hurting somewhat I’m not sure there’s as much “blame” to go around as many think.
The key to a big blue wave was to tie every GOP enabler to Trump. That...just didn’t happen, or at least it didn’t happen enough. Instead we got sort of a mixed bag. We gained 1-3 seats (tbd) in the Senate, lost perhaps 8-9 seats in the House (in red districts to begin with).
Here in Michigan we elected Biden, Gary Peters, flipped the state Supreme Court...but in the state legislature we gained two and lost two. Here in purple-trending-blue Oakland County, Dems won 5/6 county-wide races and 12/21 commission seats.
VT and MA both have GOP governors, and we remember what happened in the 2010 MA special election. Even in the House seats which are guaranteed to go blue, that’d still mean months with a vacancy which could mean a GOP majority in the meantime.
This is interesting, though: “John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress who was an adviser to Mr. Obama on climate change.”
It’s not unreasonable for people to assume that “defund the police” means to take away ALL funding given that “defund” literally means to remove funding from something. You can argue that it doesn’t necessarily mean ALL funding, but that’s not an unreasonable interpretation.
This is similar to how polls show M4All having high approval ratings which drop significantly when you explain that “for all” wouldn’t be optional. Many people assume it means “for all who want it”.
Not to mention even if you support M4All, IT’S DEAD UNTIL AT LEAST 2024. Unless you think M4All supporters are going to pick up another 80 seats in the House AND flip all 30-odd GOP seats up in the Senate in the midterms, why the fuck are you picking this battle RIGHT NOW??
Biden will be VERY lucky to get us to ACA 1.5 before 2023, much less 2.0+a PO, and even THAT assumes we flip BOTH GA Senate seats AND the SCOTUS doesn’t strike the whole law down next spring.
Given the situation, killing the subsidy cliff, beefing up the subsidy formula, fixing the family glitch and something to entice more states into expanding Medicaid would be pretty fucking impressive in my view.