New Guidance: Federal Regulators Allow “Collaborative Arrangements” for Enforcement

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.

Diving Deep on Two New Rate Studies

With the Affordable Care Act’s most significant reforms going into effect in 2014, attention has increasingly turned to the price tag for consumers. Following last week’s release of not one but two analyses on projected health insurance premiums in 2014, the issue is receiving headlines once again. Christine Monahan and Katie Keith report on the major findings from these two analyses and the significant distinctions between them.

Paying for Value, By the Numbers

Everyone likes to talk about paying for value, but how is it being implemented in the real world? Sarah Dash highlights two new studies that shed some light on key benchmarks to watch as health care coverage continues to evolve.

Some States Consider Nondiscrimination Requirements

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.

Ready for Reform?

On the third anniversary of Affordable Care Act implementation, significant reforms have been set in motion, but much remains to be done. Sarah Dash poses a few of the most critical questions that state and federal policymakers continue to grapple with on March 23, 2013.

Beware the Latest Loophole

As significant an impact as the Affordable Care Act will have on the U.S. health insurance market, there remain a number of ways health insurance carriers and other stakeholders may avoid or delay the law’s reforms. Christine Monahan discusses a new loophole gaining attention at the state level that would allow health insurance carriers to delay compliance with the ACA’s 2014 market reforms for a year.

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.