The Affordable Care Act put in place new protections to prevent health plan benefit designs that discriminate against people based on their health needs. But implementing and enforcing those protections have been easier said than done. CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia take a look at regulatory lessons learned and challenges ahead.
This past week’s stunning election results have put the future of the Affordable Care Act – and health coverage for millions of people – in jeopardy. What the new President and Congress will replace the law with is anyone’s guess. Sabrina Corlette, Kevin Lucia and JoAnn Volk discuss how we at CHIR will continue our mission of improving access to affordable and adequate insurance through reasoned, evidence-based research and analysis.
The next President and Congress will likely need to consider policy options to help stabilize the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces. But the challenges in those markets are not unique – Medicare Advantage markets have faced similar turmoil. In this blog post for Health Affairs, Sabrina Corlette and Jack Hoadley review the Bush administration’s policy responses to market instability in Medicare – and the lessons those policies hold for the ACA.
Choosing a health plan is like putting a puzzle together, you need help putting all the pieces together. This year for open enrollment, Healthcare.gov has more features to be that help for consumers so they can put the puzzle together with shopping tools and information. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn and Emily Curran summarize some of the helpful changes on Healthcare.gov.
Simple Choice plans, standardized benefit designs with fixed cost-sharing amounts and pre-deductible services, are new this year on Healthcare.gov. These types of plans can help consumers make “apples-to-apples” comparisons, but the the availability of such plans depends on insurer participation and local markets. Emily Curran and others here at CHIR take a look at the availability of Simple Choice plans on Healthcare.gov and find it’s a mixed bag.
Two new studies captured our attention recently. One, from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services examines enrollment in coverage inside and outside the health insurance marketplaces. The other, from Urban Institute researchers, examines different enrollment experiences between Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states. The Center for Children & Families’ Karina Wagnerman takes a closer look.
There’s a national election approaching but it isn’t for President. In just one week, consumers can vote for a new health plan on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. To help them through that process, CHIR is proud to re-launch the Navigator Resource Guide, a searchable, online resource for close to 300 frequently asked questions about private health insurance and the marketplaces.
Healthcare.gov will be taking lessons learned from the past three open enrollments, as well as its own testing data and analysis, to be more targeted, effective and efficient this year with its outreach and messaging. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn summarizes the administration’s strategy for reaching the remaining uninsured before and during this year’s open enrollment.
Insurers and other critics have called on the Obama Administration to shorten the 3-month grace period for paying overdue health plan premiums, asserting that consumers are abusing it. But as documented by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Tara Straw, such concerns reflect a misunderstanding of how grace periods work and are refuted by enrollment and disenrollment data.
Since the beginning of open enrollment season three years ago, the administration has continually made improvements to the shopping experience on healthcare.gov. As open enrollment is just a few short weeks away, CHIR’s Sandy Ahn summarizes what consumers shopping for a plan can expect.
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.
