In our most recent issue brief for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers studied the progress states have made to date in implementing the 2014 market reforms and found that most states have yet to move forward with changes they need. Katie Keith discusses the actions that states have taken so far and what our findings mean for federal and state regulators as they implement the Affordable Care Act.
Although the federal government will play a primary role in administering the navigator program in the 33 states with a federally facilitated exchange, many state legislatures have enacted or considered legislation that subjects navigators to state requirements. In a post that originally appeared on The Commonwealth Fund Blog, Katie Keith, Kevin Lucia, and Christine Monahan describe the role of navigators and well as the potentially detrimental impact of this recent state legislative activity on effective consumer outreach.
While we have certainly seen some busy weeks for Affordable Care Act implementation, we had not expected this week to be so filled with new federal guidance and key events on exchange development and other insurance reform issues. To help you (and us) keep up, Katie Keith has a quick guide on what is happening this week on Affordable Care Act implementation.
With much of the country still reeling from the Boston marathon bombings, many of the victims, as well as their families and friends, have already begun the long road to recovery. With estimates that total medical costs could be as high as $9 million, Katie Keith considers some of the costs and challenges that the victims might face in obtaining the care they need.
On March 15, 2013, federal regulators released guidance on how the Affordable Care Act’s new market reforms will be enforced. In a post that originally appeared on The Commonwealth Fund Blog, Katie Keith and Kevin Lucia describe how the new guidance fits into the Affordable Care Act’s enforcement framework and what the new guidance means for enforcement of the law’s most significant reforms.
With the Affordable Care Act’s most significant reforms going into effect in 2014, attention has increasingly turned to the price tag for consumers. Following last week’s release of not one but two analyses on projected health insurance premiums in 2014, the issue is receiving headlines once again. Christine Monahan and Katie Keith report on the major findings from these two analyses and the significant distinctions between them.
In implementing the Affordable Care Act, state regulators may increasingly look for ways to ensure that health insurance does not discriminate against certain groups of individuals, such as people living with HIV, older Americans, and even women. In this spirit, Katie Keith describes how Colorado and the District of Columbia each took recent steps to prohibit insurers from discriminating against enrollees based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
With much attention focused on this week’s Republican National Convention, Katie Keith dives in to presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s platform on healthcare—and what it could mean for consumers and the future of the Affordable Care Act.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) held its annual summer meeting in Atlanta from August 11 to August 14. Katie Keith discusses the most interesting things heard at the meeting.
On November 16, state regulators and interested parties held the first public meeting of the NAIC's new Health Care Reform Regulatory Alternatives Working Group, charged with providing a forum for discussing open issues and alternatives to state-based exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Katie Keith has highlights from this meeting and previews what the group might discuss at the next NAIC national meeting later this month.
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.
