While the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted financial catastrophe across the country, the private health insurance industry appears to be thriving. CHIR researchers Megan Houston and Sabrina Corlette consider whether the traditional use of these extra funds is the best way to spend them and discuss opportunities that states may have to redirect money towards COVID-19 testing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk that patients will experience surprise bills for out-of-network health care services. In their latest post for the Health Affairs blog, CHIR’s Jack Hoadley, Kevin Lucia, and Katie Keith discuss the latest Congressional and administrative efforts to protect people from surprise balance billing and chart a path for a potential federal solution.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented threats to health and safety, and exacerbates existing inequities that continue to jeopardize the wellbeing of millions of Americans. To help state policymakers during a time of great upheaval and uncertainty, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Consumer Representatives put together recommendations on access to coverage and care, health equity and racial justice, and other state policy issues.
This month, CHIR’s Mari Tikoyan read studies on the role of the Affordable Care Act in addressing health insurance disparities among Asian Americans, the impact of COVID-19 on health insurance coverage, and the price of COVID-19 testing.
To re-open safely, many employers will need to rely on regular testing for the virus that causes COVID-19. But doing so is expensive, and some have called for it to be financed by employers’ health benefit plans. In a new post for the Health Affairs blog, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette joins the Urban Institute’s Linda Blumberg and Michael Simpson in a look at the data. They find that relying on group plan coverage alone would place an excessive burden on workers.
The Trump administration has promoted short-term health plans as a cheap substitute for comprehensive, Affordable Care Act-compliant health insurance. In this guest post for CHIRblog, former Montana insurance regulator Christina L. Goe reviewed a wide range short-term plan policies and found multiple confusing and complicated plan terms that make it difficult for consumers to assess and compare plans and could expose them to considerable financial risk.
The Congressional Budget Office and others predicted that short-term health plans would become more generous in the wake of the Trump administration’s policy to encourage their use as an alternative to Affordable Care Act coverage. In their latest post for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR experts reviewed over 400 short-term plan policies to determine if, in fact, they have become more comprehensive over time.
A new report published by the Urban Institute provides updated estimates on how many people are likely to become uninsured as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated job losses. Our colleague Joan Alker of Georgetown’s Center for Children & Families takes a look at the grim forecast.
The Trump administration recently issued guidance to health insurers, determining that they are not required to cover workplace or public health surveillance testing for COVID-19. In a recent post for the State Health & Value Strategies project, Sabrina Corlette assesses what this latest federal interpretation means for states’ efforts to combat the pandemic.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has placed enormous pressure on virtually all facets of U.S. society. Much attention has appropriately been placed on the efforts of health care providers to deliver care to those infected with COVID-19. However, less is known about the experiences of the health insurers who reimburse those health care providers for the care they deliver. In a new report supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, insurance experts at CHIR and the Urban Institute share findings from interviews with executives at 25 health insurance companies on their impressions of the ongoing ramifications of the pandemic and their response to the crisis.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the individual blog post authors and do not represent the views of Georgetown University, the Center on Health Insurance Reforms, any organization that the author is affiliated with, or the opinions of any other author who publishes on this blog.
