You can enroll in or change plans if you have certain life changes, or qualify for Medicaid or CHIP.

A time outside the yearly Open Enrollment Period when you can sign up for health insurance. You qualify for a Special Enrollment Period if you’ve had certain life events, including losing health coverage, moving, getting married, having a baby, or adopting a child.

Depending on your Special Enrollment Period type, you may have 60 days before or 60 days following the event to enroll in a plan. If you miss your Special Enrollment Period window, you may have to wait until the next Open Enrollment Period to apply.

The payment — which the IRS is calling an "economic impact payment," the government has named a "recovery rebate," and many people are calling a "stimulus check" — is technically an advance tax credit meant to offset your 2020 federal income taxes.

Is the money from the check taxable?
No, the money is not taxable.

What is a tax credit?
A tax credit is an amount of money awarded to you, the taxpayer, by the IRS that reduces your tax bill on a dollar-for-dollar basis. It is one of the last steps in calculating your annual tax bill and can be claimed regardless of whether you itemize your deductions.

“That’s the problem with the for-profit health care system,” Hlumyk said, citing the tendency of hospitals to compete for resources instead of share them.

The Cares Act, the $2 trillion stimulus package signed into law on Friday, is a massive shot in the arm for a moribund economy, with payments and loan guarantees to workers, small businesses, and industries hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The U.S. Postal Service is included in the act too—it allows USPS to borrow up to $10 billion from the Treasury.

The government wants to ensure mail and packages keep flowing during this unprecedented period of economic pause. It’s a necessary step given that logistics providers are the lifeblood of any economy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seeking more funding for the U.S. Postal Service as lawmakers work on a new round of aid amid the coronavirus pandemic, and Democrats warn the independent agency is in crisis.

The stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump on Friday allows the postal service to borrow up to $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury. On Tuesday, Pelosi, a California Democrat, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” she wants more funding so the USPS could put in place a wider-ranging vote-by-mail system and deliver equipment to those fighting the outbreak.

After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million. Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

“We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”

Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.

Congressional Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and House Speaker John Boehner, leveraged the debt ceiling — a limit on the government’s borrowing ability that had to be raised — to insist that the Obama administration accept federal spending curbs. The compromise, codified in the 2011 Budget Control Act, required a bipartisan “super committee” to find additional ways to reduce the deficit, or else it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration.”

A coronavirus test made by Abbott Laboratories and introduced with considerable fanfare by President Donald Trump in a Rose Garden news conference this week is giving state and local health officials very little added capacity to perform speedy tests needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

[snip]

Yet a document circulated among officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week shows that state and local public health labs were set to receive a total of only 5,500 coronavirus tests from the giant manufacturer of medical devices, diagnostics and drugs, according to emails obtained by Kaiser Health News.

That number falls well short of the “about 500,000 capacity of Abbott tests that” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said were in the states and were “not being utilized.” Although it is unclear whether she was referring to just the quick test or combining it with another test — one with slower results — that Abbott previously received authorization to sell.

[snip]

Labs in all 50 states were set to receive roughly the same number of Abbott’s test cartridges and the devices on which they run ― 100 tests and 10 or 15 devices — the document shows, regardless of how many confirmed COVID-19 cases officials had reported in each state.

[snip]

Abbott Labs spokesperson Darcy Ross on Thursday said the company had shipped tests to customers in 18 states but did not elaborate on how many were public clients or governments as opposed to private health care facilities. Ross also said the document circulated among federal officials showed an “intended purchase by HHS and FEMA” of tests and related instruments.

FEMA referred questions to HHS, whose spokesperson Mia Heck said, “We do not comment on any allegedly leaked documents.”

“We can confirm that the federal government is looking to make the initial purchase of a rapid point-of-care test to increase COVID-19 testing capacity in the United States,” she said. “Initially, each state will receive 15 point-of-care instruments, and then they will be able to resupply through the commercial market.”

[snip]

The price of Abbott's stock has jumped 26.5% since March 23.