North Dakota and the ACA

Not that a lot of North Dakotans read my blog, but this stuff is bound to be googled a lot in the near future (signups for the insurance exchange and medicaid expansion start on October 1st), and I found it very hard to find anything, so once I finally stumbled on useful information, I figured it would be good to put it all into one place.

First of all, the basics: open enrollment starts October 1st, coverage kicks in January 1st, and open enrollment ends on March 31st. Everyone who lives in ND and is either a U.S. citizen or a resident alien is eligible for the exchange.

There’s the main site for health care stuff, https://www.healthcare.gov/. Clicking on the “See your options” button will get you the standard insurance-questionnaire and lead you to possible options of what you may or may not be eligible for, and also a short FAQ with some other issues relating to changes as a consequence of the ACA (Also known as Obamacare).

If you’re looking at Medicaid, ignore the part where it says you should go to ND’s medicaid website for more info. They’ve not updated anything to reflect the coming changes yet. This will probably be the most useful bit of advice:

Starting October 1, 2013, fill out an application for the Health Insurance Marketplace. When you finish this application, we’ll tell you which programs you and your family qualify for. If it looks like anyone is eligible for Medicaid, we’ll let the Medicaid agency know so your coverage can start in 2014.
[…]
North Dakota will expand its Medicaid program in 2014 to cover households with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. That works out to about $15,800 a year for 1 person or $32,500 for a family of 4.

If you’re looking at reduced premiums for coverage from the exchange, there’s a calculator that can give estimates, but nothing will be “official” until October 1st and the calculator is for national averages not for ND specifically, so the quotes may be somewhat inaccurate. The calculator is at http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

The actual application forms etc. won’t be available until October 1st. As far as I can tell, it’ll be possible to apply online at https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/individual/#state=north-dakota; via mail (downloadable forms will be available Oct. 1st); and in person with the help of certain “navigators” (see below).

There will also be information sessions throughout October on the ACA: http://www.itstartswithbluend.com/sessions.php and there’s a toll free info line at 1-800-318-2596. Aside from that, four locations are meant to serve as “navigators”, meaning they are supposed to supply people with information to help with submitting applications, clarifying issues regarding the different plans etc., and also help people with applying and otherwise navigating through the application process. The information I found lists the following as the “navigators” for ND, but the sites of these places don’t say anything on the topic, so it may not be accurate:

Family HealthCare Center, Fargo – http://www.famhealthcare.org/index.html

Coal County Community Health Center, Beulah – http://www.coalcountryhealth.com/

Northland Community Health Center, Turtle Lake – http://www.northlandchc.org/

Valley health Community Center, Northwood – http://mabu-vchc.taopowered.net/

North Dakota’s War on Uteri, continued

Just got back from the Fargo rally organized by Stand Up For Women North Dakota against the ridiculously restrictive anti-abortion laws winding its way through the legislature. It was fucking cold, and I ended up standing for most of it on a 3 meter tall pile of snow and ice. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by actually getting to listen to a Republican who was a)actually one of the organizers of this rally; b)commented favorably on the importance of freedom from religion; and c)actually said that she’d expect people to hold her accountable in her office on a school board should she ever try to get religion into the curriculum. I didn’t know such Republicans even existed in this country anywhere.

Anyway, the rally (and its sister rallies in Bismarck and Grand Forks) was specifically a call for the governor of ND to veto proposed laws which have made it through both house and senate, and which should land on his desk sometime today. Three of them I’ve mentioned in my previous post on this, while the fourth one is one that had previously escaped my attention. The bills are: SB2305, a TRAP law designed to close down the last clinic in ND; HB1305, meant to prohibit “abortions for sex selection or genetic abnormalities”; HB1456, a “heartbeat” bill; and SB2368, which is the one I’d previously missed and which actually proposes to cross out the “within present constitutional limits” part and replace it with a “state’s compelling interest in the unborn human life from the time the unborn child is capable of feeling pain” line (among other shit*; basically, this is an attempt at a 20-week-abortion ban), and which also includes this last minute attempt to block the federal sex-ed grant that NDSU received and that was finally unblocked as (currently) perfectly within ND law (emphasis mine):

Except as required by federal law, no funds of this state or any agency, county, municipality, school district, or any other subdivision thereof, or institution under the control of the state board of higher education, and no federal funds passing through the state treasury or a state agency may be used:
1. As family planning funds by any person or public or private agency which performs, refers, or encourages abortion; or
2. To contract with, or provide financial or other support to individuals, organizations, or entities performing, inducing, referring for, or counseling in favor of, abortions.

As of this moment, the bills have neither been signed nor vetoed by the governor; and this morning, when asked, all he had to say on the topic was basically “blah blah flood is more important blah blah won’t comment until they’re on my desk” (audio found here. And even if he vetoes it, the same shit that just went down in Arkansas can also happen here: the veto can still be overridden. I don’t know that there’s much hope that it won’t come to that, one way or another. (UPDATE: ND Governor Dalrymple is a douche canoe)

And even if by some miraculous event the laws get vetoed AND the veto won’t get overridden, there’s still SCR4009, which also has been passed and which means ND will have a referendum on a personhood amendment in 2014.

Worst state for uterus-bearers, indeed.

UPDATE: here’s a picture, and here’s the InForum article about the rally

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*for example: they define abortions for ectopic pregnancies and to remove dead fetuses out of existence; it excludes even major psychological damage from the “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function” which would allow for an exception to the law, and specifically excludes being diagnosed as suicidal from being a medical emergency;

North Dakota’s War on Uteri*

First, here’s the series Rachel Maddow did on the abortion clinics in states with only one such clinic:

Threats and traps push Mississippi to the brink of 40-year rights rollback
Last bastions of an unprotected right under attack
Women bear burden of extremist effort to undermine Roe v. Wade
GOP war on women continues to rage in the states
UPDATE: here’s another clip for that series, this time with Melissa Harris-Perry: Anti-abortion crusade misses target, hurts vulnerable women

Second, this is what’s going on in North Dakota in terms of proposed legislation:
North Dakota Lawmakers Have Plenty of Anti-Abortion Bills to Choose From, plenty meaning all these different bills: SCR4009, a fetal personhood bill which would require a 2014 vote to amend the constitustion and which was just approved by the ND Senate; SB2302, which would have banned chemical abortions and all abortions except those to save a woman’s life, which luckily seems to have failed in the senate 18 to 29; SB2303 another personhood bill, which passed the senate 25 to 22 and is now in another Committee Hearing; and SB2305, a TRAP law designed to close down the last clinic in ND, which has also passed the senate 30 to 17. Oh, and then there’s the newly proposedHB1305, which would prohibit “abortions for sex selection or genetic abnormalities” (which really just amounts to “please jump through more hoops”)
UPDATE: another one: HB1456, a “heartbeat” bill, passed by the house 63 to 28

And in addition to the anti-abortion bills, we have an anti-poor-people bill, HB1385, proposing a Fee to Get Welfare, by making welfare applicants pay for the mandatory drug test themselves (Because we all know people applying for welfare have lot’s of spare cash, amiright?); the deeply uninformative SB2175 titled “The liabilities of husband and wife” which seems to want to make separated-but-still-married folks responsible for each other’s debts; which sounds kinda dangerous.

And then there’s NDSU president Bresciani, caving in to assholes in the legislature and freezing funding two professors at NDSU have received to promote proper sex ed in this state: Sex Ed Program Provokes Fight Over Planned Parenthood in North Dakota

In conclusion, this state fucking sucks.

P.S.: completely unrelated to the topic at hand, ND is apparently also one of those states throwing a fit over federal gun laws: HB1183, a bill “relating to forbidding state governmental entities from providing aid and assistance to the federal government or any other governmental entity for the investigation, enforcement, and prosecution of federal firearms laws not in force as of January”.

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*title changed, because I just realized I was doing what I criticize other people for. So: anti-abortion legislation concerns many women, but not all, since some don’t have uteri and can’t get pregnant; and on the other hand, it also concerns some non-women because they have uteri, i.e. trans men and some genderqueer folks.

Alternative Energy

After reading and watching the depressing BP clusterfuck, it’s things like this that manage to cheer me up. This is 21st Century North Dakota:

These were built as part of the “shovel ready” projects in the stimulus bill. And Google is planning on building another windfarm somewhere in this state, as well.

Dispatches from the Boonies

So I went to the coffeshop, and out of boredom started reading the Minot Daily out of the recycle bin. In them (I’m fairly certain there was more than one day in there), I found the following:

1)Half a page just of church ads; 30 total, all different. Most were different flavors of Lutheran, but there was some Baptists, an Assembly of God, and some other versions I’m not familiar with. Noticeably, the two Catholic Churches in town weren’t part of that ad-collection

2)An opinion by the editor of the paper about how “net neutrality” is a bad thing.

3)An opinion piece by Michelle Malkin, whinging about how Obama is politicizing the Census, and how evil it is of the leftists(!) to have Karl Rove(!!) try to use a reference to the Founding Fathers(!!!) to get people to comply with it.

4)A point counterpoint about the RCC drama, with Stephen Prothero on the one side, saying that if only the Church could apologize and promise not to do it again, all would be well. The other side went straight for the bible, pulling out some quote about persecution and harassment of a prophet.

I need to stop reading that stoopid paper. It’s not good for my mental health.