The NAIC wrapped up its Fall National Meeting last week, and although there was little of the upcoming ACA debate on the official agenda, the topic dominated the hallway chatter. JoAnn Volk provides a report on the meeting.
Extended to December 19, 2016, consumers have four more days to enroll in an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan that starts January 1, 2017. With an incoming Congress and President-Elect promising to repeal the health care law, consumers may have questions about what will happen to their coverage or why they should bother to enroll. Before the sun sets on this year’s open enrollment season, we’ve answered a couple of common consumer questions.
A new Urban Institute analysis shows that close to 30 million people will lose coverage if the Affordable Care Act is partially repealed through a budget reconciliation process. This will result in national uninsurance rates that are actually higher than they were before the ACA was enacted. What’s behind the numbers? Sabrina Corlette takes a look.
Medical underwriting, outlawed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is a practice used by insurance companies to assess a consumer’s health status. In the event of an ACA repeal, millions of people could lose coverage, pay higher premiums, or receive inadequate benefits that exclude essential health services, all based on a pre-existing condition. While many of us don’t see ourselves as falling under that category, the list of health conditions that qualify you for the chopping block may surprise you.
It’s the holiday season, but rather than visions of sugar plums dancing above our heads, we have visions of mammogram machines, birth control, doctor offices, and medical bills. Prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), women faced numerous barriers obtaining affordable health care. After years of insurance industry practices like gender rating and pre-existing condition exclusions, the ACA ushered in a new era for women’s health, eliminating those discriminatory and unfair insurance practices from the insurance market.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has extended insurance coverage to 22 million people, but the law’s critics often point to the high out-of-pocket costs in some of the ACA’s marketplace health plans. And while many people do face high deductibles and cost-sharing for health care services, a recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that dramatically fewer people are struggling to pay medical bills, compared to what they faced before the ACA.
The Affordable Care Act put in place new protections to prevent health plan benefit designs that discriminate against people based on their health needs. But implementing and enforcing those protections have been easier said than done. CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia take a look at regulatory lessons learned and challenges ahead.
In Washington, our health policy minds are on system overload. Since the election last week, the town is buzzing about the President-elect and new Congress’ promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as one of their first legislative actions. At the same time, they have also pledged allegiance to some of the law’s market reforms. Since most of those reforms are enforced at the state level, a continued state role will be critical to preserving these vital consumer protections.
President-elect Trump’s transition team has posted their top replacement ideas for the Affordable Care Act. But those ideas – allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, reinstating high risk pools, and expanding HSAs – are all tired retreads of old policies that have been proven failures. Sabrina Corlette takes a look.
This past week’s stunning election results have put the future of the Affordable Care Act – and health coverage for millions of people – in jeopardy. What the new President and Congress will replace the law with is anyone’s guess. Sabrina Corlette, Kevin Lucia and JoAnn Volk discuss how we at CHIR will continue our mission of improving access to affordable and adequate insurance through reasoned, evidence-based research and analysis.
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.
