We’re starting to learn more about health insurance premium rates for 2015. Whether they go up, down, or stay the same, many will view them as a referendum on the ACA. Sabrina Corlette shares two new resources that help improve our understanding of the factors that drive premium rates.
Now that open enrollment is over, consumers are starting to raise questions about their coverage. One such question from Georgia illustrates one of the challenges consumers may face – a network that changes mid-year. JoAnn Volk takes a look at some options.
While we’re struggling with Affordable Care Act (ACA) issues, there’s value in taking the time to look back and appreciate the impact of the ACA and other healthcare reforms implemented over the past few decades. To that end, CHIR faculty member and former Indiana Insurance Commissioner Sally McCarty is posting a series called “Back in the Day – Lessons from Pre-reform Days.” This installment looks at policies in a “death spiral.”
Just when you thought you had figured out all the possible special enrollment periods for coverage in the new health insurance marketplaces, the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) has offered up a few more. Sabrina Corlette gives us an overview.
It’s decision time for states considering whether to transition to a state-based, partnership, federally facilitated or other form of health insurance marketplace. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, Sarah Dash and Amy Thomas dig into which states are doing what, and why.
Remember the Medicaid loopers? These are people who applied for coverage through the health insurance Marketplace, to be told they were initially assessed as Medicaid eligible, and to apply for coverage with their state’s Medicaid agency. If the Medicaid agency rejected their application, they were then bounced back to the Marketplace. In this blog post, Sabrina Corlette takes a look at one family’s efforts to get through a maze of bureaucracy to obtain coverage for their children.
The U.S. Census Bureau is implementing changes to the questions they ask on their Current Population Survey (CPS). Many observers have expressed concern that the changes will inhibit accurate assessments of the Affordable Care Act’s impact on coverage levels. But Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Budget Project, in a guest blog for Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, argues that researchers will still have plenty of good Census data with which to understand the effects of the ACA.
How does COBRA fit into coverage options now that people who lose employer-sponsored coverage have other insurance options under the ACA? In this blog post, JoAnn Volk takes up that question and looks at what an offer of COBRA means for special enrollment periods under the ACA.
Last week the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics published a report documenting a decline in the number of people with problems paying their medical bills. CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette takes a look at the numbers behind the report and the impact, if any, of the Affordable Care Act.
Secretary Sebelius will soon be stepping down as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She led the agency through an extraordinary time of health system transformation. One person who knew she would be up to the job – and who knows she’s a tough act to follow – is her former insurance commissioner colleague, Sally McCarty. In this post, Sally looks back at her two decades of working with Sebelius and celebrates the tenure of a remarkable Secretary.
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.
