In a new article published on The Commonwealth Fund’s To The Point site, CHIR experts Dania Palanker, JoAnn Volk, and Justin Giovannelli look at the individual health insurance market before the Essential Health Benefits and the financial risk consumers will bear if we return to a market without benefit protections.
While all eyes were on the House reconciliation bill to repeal and replace parts of the ACA, another House committee advanced three bills that could have a far-reaching impact on people with employer-based coverage. CHIR experts take a look.
Congressional leaders and the President have said any plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will ensure access for people with pre-existing conditions. However, how they are covered matters a great deal, in part because of the effects on the stability of the risk pool in the individual market.
Just hours before President Trump took the oath of office, the Maryland health insurance CO-OP Evergreen Health officially closed a deal with the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) to sever its ties with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) CO-OP program. The company will now transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company, allowing it to gain an infusion of financing from outside investors. Executives credited the deal with enabling Evergreen to survive and stay competitive. However, it also provides insight into the immense challenges involved in starting up a new insurance company in the current market, even with federal financing.
On February 7, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing titled, “Reimagining the Health Care Marketplace for America’s Small Businesses,” to discuss the challenges small businesses are facing in the health insurance marketplaces and to offer potential solutions for the next phase of reform. Georgetown’s own Dania Palanker provided testimony on how the ACA has helped to lessen the burdens for small business owners who wish to provide health coverage to employees.
CHIR researchers Justin Giovannelli and Emily Curran interviewed more than 40 marketplace officials, consumer assisters, technology vendors, and other subject matter experts to see how having an estimator can change consumers’ experiences in the marketplace and to understand the concerns of policymakers as they have considered whether and how to implement these tools.
State regulators were making progress on mental health parity enforcement, due in part to new federal grants and technical assistance. But a repeal of the ACA would put at risk further progress on achieving parity in coverage for mental health and substance use disorders.
With much of the attention about ACA repeal efforts focused on Washington DC, it’s easy to forget that repeal-and-replacement efforts would significantly affect state approaches to insurance regulation. In their latest article for The Commonwealth Fund’s To The Point blog, Kevin Lucia and Katie Keith examine what might happen in the 32 states and D.C. that have adopted state-level ACA protections.
As our country grapples with an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” Congress is taking steps to take away an important tool to fight it — the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a post for the Health Affairs blog, CHIR expert Dania Palanker and Urban Institute researchers Lisa Clemans-Cope and Jane Wishner assess policies and programs under the ACA that have helped tackle the opioid crisis and what could be lost if they are repealed.
Amid an uncertain future for the Affordable Care Act, insurers face crucial decisions whether to remain in the market and how to price their plans. In their latest issue brief for the Urban Institute, CHIR experts report on interviews with a wide range of insurers participating in the individual market in 28 states.
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.
