The Trump administration recently asked the public to submit input on policies that would encourage the sale of insurance across state lines, including through “health care choice compacts.” CHIR’s Emily Curran reviewed comments submitted by consumer advocates, insurers, and states and summarizes them here.
Short-term plans are now being sold to consumers as a replacement for Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage. However, because these plans are exempt from many consumer protections and ACA rules, a number of states have stepped up to regulate the design and marketing of these plans. In their latest issue brief for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts document recent state action to regulate short-term plans and protect their residents and markets.
Several state legislatures are considering bills to re-instate the Affordable Care Act’s preexisting condition protections in the event a federal court invalidates the law in Texas v. Azar. While no state can fully protect consumers from the fallout of a bad court decision, attempts to “bake in” the preexisting protections shouldn’t leave large loopholes for insurance companies to exploit. CHIR experts examine a Louisiana bill that would codify some, but not all, of the ACA’s insurance reforms.
April showers bring May flowers, and plenty of health policy research. This month, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe reviews studies on the burden of health care costs on families, the affordability of employer-sponsored insurance, the effects of hospital concentration on insurance premiums, and why Medicaid insurers hesitate to sell plans on the Affordable Care Act’s individual market.
New York’s 2014 law to protect consumers from surprise out-of-network medical bills has been touted as a model for other states and even potential federal legislation. In their latest report for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette and Olivia Hoppe share findings from a case study of how New York’s law has affected patients, providers, and insurers, 5 years post-enactment.
Last month, North Dakota enacted legislation to establish a state reinsurance program, and a number states are considering similar bills. To help state consumer advocates engage with state officials on reinsurance and other health insurance reform issues, Community Catalyst, with support from CHIR experts, launched a new website that will house a health insurance reform toolkit for advocates. First up: The Advocate’s Guide to Reinsurance.
During the last open enrollment period, the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces faced a number of headwinds, including federal policy changes predicted to curb enrollment. Given myriad obstacles to enrollment efforts, it came as no surprise that overall marketplace plan selections dropped slightly this year. But a deeper dive into enrollment trends reveals that most state-based marketplaces outperformed the federally facilitated marketplace. In a new post for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR’s Rachel Schwab and Sabrina Corlette unpack data from the recent open enrollment period to see how the marketplaces performed during a turbulent time, finding that certain policy and operational decisions were associated with better results.
The Trump administration is expected to soon publish a final rule to expand employers’ use of Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) for employees to purchase individual market insurance. In her latest piece for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR’s JoAnn Volk assesses the proposed changes and their implications for employers, employees, and state insurance markets.
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and insurance rules in the Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for the 2020 plan year. To gauge stakeholder reactions, CHIR reviewed a sample of these comments. In the third and final of our blog series, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe summarizes responses from a selection of consumer advocates.
Recently, CMS issued a proposed rule modifying the federal funding methodology for the Basic Health Program (BHP) for 2019 and 2020. Under the proposal, technical changes could cause participating states to lose $300 million in federal funding. While funding for the programs is being debated, we checked in on how Minnesota and New York’s BHPs are faring amidst federal uncertainty.
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.
