State regulators were making progress on mental health parity enforcement, due in part to new federal grants and technical assistance. But a repeal of the ACA would put at risk further progress on achieving parity in coverage for mental health and substance use disorders.
As the health care debate continues, we face a number of unknowns. Congressional leadership and President Trump vowed to repeal the ACA, but have yet to reach a consensus on the replacement plan. Meanwhile, consumers and insurers are making big decisions about health plans without knowing what the individual market will look like. Predicting the impact of unknown events is no easy task; if you’ve misplaced your crystal ball, the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) recently released an issue paper on the future of the individual market, lending their expertise to a debate riddled with uncertainty.
With much of the attention about ACA repeal efforts focused on Washington DC, it’s easy to forget that repeal-and-replacement efforts would significantly affect state approaches to insurance regulation. In their latest article for The Commonwealth Fund’s To The Point blog, Kevin Lucia and Katie Keith examine what might happen in the 32 states and D.C. that have adopted state-level ACA protections.
As our country grapples with an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” Congress is taking steps to take away an important tool to fight it — the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a post for the Health Affairs blog, CHIR expert Dania Palanker and Urban Institute researchers Lisa Clemans-Cope and Jane Wishner assess policies and programs under the ACA that have helped tackle the opioid crisis and what could be lost if they are repealed.
Shortly after the election, Congress asked state officials to provide input on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. CHIR expert Sabrina Corlette tracked down 34 of those letters, and found the responses – particularly from states with Republican leaders – to not not always be what she expected. She shared her top takeaways here.
Amid an uncertain future for the Affordable Care Act, insurers face crucial decisions whether to remain in the market and how to price their plans. In their latest issue brief for the Urban Institute, CHIR experts report on interviews with a wide range of insurers participating in the individual market in 28 states.
What will happen if the Affordable Care Act is repealed without a replacement? In their latest article for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia find that it could look a lot like the regulatory landscape that existed in several states that tried to enact health reform in the past. The lessons from those experiences are grim.
Before the Affordable Care Act, where you lived determined how accessible and affordable coverage would be. In a new primer, we provide a 50-state review of access and affordability requirements before the ACA set a federal floor. This look back shows us the landscape we may return to if the ACA is repealed.
While critics have been describing the demise of the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, the Obama Administration has been taking steps to strengthen the risk pool and to ensure its long-term sustainability. These promising steps are now at risk under the threat of repeal with nothing to replace approach that Congressional leaders and the new administration seem to be taking. At risk and in jeopardy is the coverage of millions of people. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn takes a look.
In the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s passage, 17 states embraced the chance to set up and manage their own marketplace and design an insurance market to meet local needs. In their latest article for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette, Emily Curran and Kevin Lucia review these states’ progress on expanding coverage and stabilizing their markets and find that they have much to lose if the law is repealed.
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.
