New Marketplace Research: Off-Marketplace Consumers and How Marketplace Enrollees Fare in Expansion and Nonexpansion States

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Two new studies captured our attention recently. One, from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services examines enrollment in coverage inside and outside the health insurance marketplaces. The other, from Urban Institute researchers, examines different enrollment experiences between Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states. The Center for Children & Families’ Karina Wagnerman takes a closer look.

New and Improved Navigator Resource Guide

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There’s a national election approaching but it isn’t for President. In just one week, consumers can vote for a new health plan on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. To help them through that process, CHIR is proud to re-launch the Navigator Resource Guide, a searchable, online resource for close to 300 frequently asked questions about private health insurance and the marketplaces.

Reaching the Uninsured: Outreach Strategy for Open Enrollment 4

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Healthcare.gov will be taking lessons learned from the past three open enrollments, as well as its own testing data and analysis, to be more targeted, effective and efficient this year with its outreach and messaging. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn summarizes the administration’s strategy for reaching the remaining uninsured before and during this year’s open enrollment.

The End of SHOP as We Know It?

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There’s a provision tucked into a recently proposed federal rule that could effectively destroy the Affordable Care Act-created health insurance marketplaces for small businesses, called the “SHOPs”. Sabrina Corlette takes a look.

Enrollees Aren’t Abusing Marketplace Grace Period

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Insurers and other critics have called on the Obama Administration to shorten the 3-month grace period for paying overdue health plan premiums, asserting that consumers are abusing it. But as documented by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Tara Straw, such concerns reflect a misunderstanding of how grace periods work and are refuted by enrollment and disenrollment data.

The Affordable Care Act: Efforts to Address Barriers to Health Equity

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Disparities in health insurance coverage and accessing health care continue to be a challenge in the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made impressive strides to reduce overall health disparity by ensuring that health equity exists with health insurance coverage and accessing care. Current CHIR intern and guest blogger, Julia Embry, summarizes some of the ACA’s progress to address health equity in the United States.

Low-Income Households and ACA Tax Policies: Benefit from Tax Credits but Paying the Penalty

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We are well into the third tax year of ACA premium tax credits and the individual shared responsibility requirement. The IRS recently released a report on 2014 income tax filings that includes data on the first year of the PTC and ISRP. We analyzed this data to look at the tax credits and payments by income brackets and found that millions of low-income tax filers benefited from the PTC in 2014 – but millions of low-income tax filers also paid the ISRP, indicating that a very vulnerable population still lacks coverage.

The Ever-Shrinking Pilot to Inform Consumers About Health Plans’ Network Size

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The agency running the federal health insurance marketplace announced on September 30 they would provide information on the size of health plans’ provider networks in just four states “at some point” during the coming open enrollment season. This is a dramatic roll back from the anticipated availability of the system in 34 states in 2017. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at the latest guidance and what it means for consumers.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes: Special Enrollment Periods Provide Essential Coverage During Common Life Transitions, but Many People Don’t Know They Exist

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Change in life is unavoidable: people move, get married, change jobs and have babies. Special enrollment periods (SEPs) allow people experiencing such life changes to access marketplace coverage, often with financial assistance. Unfortunately the majority of people don’t know about them. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn takes a look at SEPs, including the administration’s current approach to SEPs and the missed opportunities to raise overall awareness of them, strengthen the risk pool, and reduce the number of uninsured.

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.