Rhode Island’s insurance regulators are using their rate review authority in innovative ways to make premiums more affordable for consumers – and tackle some of the underlying drivers of health care cost increases. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at Rhode Island’s most recent action to push the rate review envelope.
An interesting thing happened in Oregon last week after the Division of Insurance publicly posted insurers’ proposed premium rates for 2014. After seeing their competitors’ prices, two insurers asked the Division to allow them to reduce their proposed rates. Sabrina Corlette examines these recent developments and their implications for consumers.
A new report from Oregon examines the effect of that state’s rate review program – and proposes innovative ways to use rate review to encourage higher quality, more efficient health care. Sabrina Corlette takes a look.
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.
In our most recent report, Kevin Lucia, Christine Monahan, and Sabrina Corlette assess attitudes towards and trends in self-insurance for smaller employers through interviews with stakeholders in 10 study states. Christine reviews the report’s findings and implications.
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.
On Monday, Vermont became the first state to release preliminary rate filings for plans to be sold in their health insurance exchange in 2014. Christine Monahan crunches the numbers to see what they mean for consumers.
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.
Planners in the District of Columbia have unanimously approved a proposal to ensure the long-term viability of their new health insurance marketplace. But it’s facing stiff opposition and a tough vote in the DC Council. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at the issue.
In our most recent issue brief for the Commonwealth Fund, Sabrina Corlette and CHIR colleagues examined states’ selection of an essential health benefits benchmark plan. In this blog Sabrina reviews the report’s findings and what they mean for ongoing implementation of these critical consumer protections.
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.
