The second open enrollment period for the health insurance marketplaces, or OE2, is mere days away. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, takes a look behind the curtain and gives us a glimpse of what we can expect.
Insurers that sell coverage through the ACA’s federally facilitated marketplaces must sign a privacy and security agreement with the federal government. New language gives insurers greater flexibility to end that agreement if premium tax credits cease to be available to marketplace enrollees. Justin Giovannelli explores the significance of this development for consumers.
A little over a year ago, researchers at CHIR and the Urban Institute predicted a 1.5 million increase in the number of self-employed entrepreneurs, as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It’s too early to know whether this prediction will bear out, but Sabrina Corlette highlights some early anecdotal signs that the law is in fact ending the phenomenon of “job lock.”
The Affordable Care Act requires all insurers to provide a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) so that consumers have a tool to help them understand what is covered under their health plan. Unfortunately, minimal oversight of this requirement has led this tool to be less useful than it could be, at a time many consumers struggle with basic health insurance literacy. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn highlights the efforts of one state – Utah – to strengthen the SBC and make it more meaningful for consumers.
Georgetown University experts from the Center on Health Insurance Reforms and the Center for Children and Families released this week a report documenting the experiences over the past year working with Navigators, Certified Application Counselors, and others working to enroll consumers in the health insurance marketplaces. JoAnn Volk, Sandy Ahn, Sabrina Corlette and Tricia Brooks share lessons learned and recommendations for future enrollments in a comprehensive report and two video clips.
As the health insurance marketplaces prepare for the second year of operation under the Affordable Care Act, IT issues are driving many states’ decisions on whether to operate a state-based marketplace. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Sarah Dash and Kevin Lucia share findings on state IT transitions and major policy actions going into 2015.
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that employer coverage is remaining steady, and premiums have increased only modestly. But long term trends suggest an erosion in employer-sponsored health benefits. CHIR’s Sean Miskell takes the pulse of employment-based insurance and emphasizes the need to strengthen all pillars of coverage.
During the past few months, CHIR faculty have examined the proliferation of narrow provider networks associated with plans on the health insurance marketplaces. Here, Sally McCarty discusses lessons learned and potential solutions offered by two faculty work products.
Last week, on the day that 115,000 people who bought coverage in the federal marketplace lost that coverage, the National Immigration Law Center filed complaints with HHS’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that the federally facilitated marketplace violated civil rights law and the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Sonya Schwartz, analyzes the concerns that underlie these filings.
A new report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation chronicles the challenges, innovations and lessons learned about the needs of consumers for assistance in accessing and using health coverage options under the Affordable Care Act. Our partner in our Navigator technical assistance project, the Georgetown Center for Children and Families’ Tricia Brooks, has this overview.
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.
