HHS released the final Section 1557 rule, completing the suite of non-discrimination rules that constitute some of the most dramatic recent changes in health insurance regulation. JoAnn Volk looks at how the rules stack up in protecting consumers with pre-existing conditions.
What does coverage look like for children on the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces? A new report from Georgetown experts Kelly Whitener, JoAnn Volk, Sean Miskell and Joan Alker examines at the adequacy of coverage, affordability of coverage, and access to providers. This blog post provides some of their topline findings.
Our Georgetown colleagues at the Center for Children and Families have released the first installment in a series of reports and briefs on the future of children’s coverage. Titled “Children in the Marketplace,” this first report examines how the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces are serving children and suggests areas for improvement.
Earlier this month, the California Office of the Patient Advocate (OPA) released its first annual report cataloguing consumer complaints and inquiries about their health plans across four California state health agencies. The report examines 27,028 consumer complaints that were closed in 2014. CHIR’s Hannah Ellison explores highlights of the report and discusses its potential for impact.
Health reform is entering a new stage. Going forward, federal and state policymakers must decide how to use the powers and tools granted them under the Affordable Care Act to stabilize risk pools, improve competition, and promote effective risk management. In this blog post Brookings scholar Henry Aaron and CHIR faculty Kevin Lucia and Justin Giovannelli discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for the ACA’s marketplaces.
While it seems like we just finished open enrollment, the next round for 2017 coverage is right around the corner. For open enrollment IV, officials will be implementing new policy changes in an effort to ensure not just a better shopping experience, but also to minimize disruptions of coverage and financial assistance. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn and Sabrina Corlette summarize some of the 2017 changes for FFMs below.
How can we best understand the coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act? Researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health and MIT unpack the latest data from the largest household survey in the United States and share some insights.
What triggers a special enrollment period to allow someone to enroll on the individual market outside of open enrollment has been a hot debated topic of late. Recently the administration issued a new rule tightening what life events trigger a special enrollment period. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn summarizes the new rule and what it means for consumers and the assisters that help them.
Our very own Sabrina Corlette was invited back to the U.S. House of Representatives for the second time in a month, this time to give testimony before the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. Here are a few highlights from the May 11 hearing.
The ACA prohibits benefit limits and cost sharing that discriminate against individuals based on health status and other factors, but federal rules also stress that insurers can continue to use reasonable medical management, which would allow benefit limits based on certain circumstances. JoAnn Volk looks at what this may mean for regulators and consumers trying to tell the difference.
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.
