States have begun to respond to the Trump administration’s new rules for association health plans with a wide range of regulatory strategies. In their latest post for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR researchers analyzed how states are using their authority to set association health plan standards and protect consumers, providers, and their markets.
With open enrollment into the Affordable Care Act marketplaces beginning November 1st, there will be considerable divergence among states in the amount of information and personalized assistance consumers receive about coverage options. While the federally run marketplace has dramatically cut back its investments in both advertising and the Navigator program, the state-based marketplaces are making big investments in those activities. In their latest To The Point blog for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Rachel Schwab discuss the findings from a new survey of state-based marketplaces.
Over the past year, new health coverage products that are not subject to the consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act have hit the individual market. One type of limited health-insurance-like offering that was already available but is now gaining attention is a direct primary care arrangement. For Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, experts at CHIR took a closer look at state law to understand how states regulate these entities and highlight some of the concerns that state insurance regulators might want to consider going forward.
On September 5, 2018, A federal district judge hears arguments in a lawsuit filed by 20 Republican governors and attorneys general to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, including its widely popular protections for people with pre-existing condition protections. Georgetown CHIR’s latest research for The Commonwealth Fund finds that a decision for the plaintiffs in this case could be be felt quite differently, depending on where you live.
In June, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a final regulation that implements President Trump’s executive order encouraging the expansion of association health plans for small businesses and self-employed individuals. Under these rules, professional or trade associations will be permitted to sell health plans that are exempt from many Affordable Care Act protections as early as September 1, 2018. To better understand how these new rules will affect states, CHIR experts interviewed six state regulators.
Health Care Sharing Ministries (HCSMs) are a form of health coverage in which members – who typically share a religious belief – make monthly payments to cover expenses of other members. HCSMs do not have to comply with the consumer protections of the ACA and may provide value for some individuals, but pose risks for others. We interviewed officials in 13 states and analyzed state laws in all states to better understand state regulators’ perspectives on regulation of HCSMs.
Last week, the Trump administration issued a final rule reversing federal limits on short-term health coverage, allowing such plans to become a long-term alternative to individual market coverage. On the eve of this policy shift, we surveyed Departments of Insurance in the seventeen state-based marketplace states to better understand their short-term markets. We found that most states do not have a complete picture of which insurers are marketing short-term policies in their state.
Through both inaction and design, federal policymakers have put the onus on states to ensure access to affordable, adequate health insurance. In a new work for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers are launching an interactive map that will track and describe state actions likely to affect residents’ access to individual market coverage.
Iowa’s legislature recently made the extraordinary decision to abdicate that state’s authority over health insurance products. And in doing so they’ve made a bad insurance market worse. In their latest piece for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia team up with actuaries at Wakely Consulting Group to assess what premiums and marketplace enrollment in Iowa would look like if the state had taken a slightly different path.
In a new Commonwealth Fund issue brief, CHIR’s Justin Giovannelli and Emily Curran interviewed leadership staff of 15 of the 17 state-run marketplaces to understand how states on the forefront of health reform perceived and responded to federal policy changes and political uncertainty in 2017. Their research finds that federal administrative actions and repeal efforts created confusion and uncertainty in 2017 that negatively affected state-run markets.
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.
