The latest dust up in Washington is a fight between the Obama Administration and employer groups over the ACA provision that limits consumers’ annual out-of-pocket costs. JoAnn Volk looks at what the issue means for employers and consumers.
We’re just 12 weeks away from the start of the third open enrollment period (OE3) for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. The results from a recently released Kaiser Family Foundation survey of health insurance Navigators and brokers offer some helpful insights on ways to improve consumer outreach and enrollment going forward. CHIR’s Hannah Ellison and Sabrina Corlette share some highlights.
Last week CHIR’s JoAnn Volk served as a panelist on an Alliance for Health Reform briefing about empowering health insurance consumers to shop for the best value and use their coverage wisely. She shares highlights of the briefing here.
A new report from CHIR researchers Sandy Ahn, Jack Hoadley and Sabrina Corlette revisits six state-based marketplaces that took varying approaches to renewing enrollees into 2015 coverage. The report examines how their different approaches affected enrollment and the consumer experience, and shares lessons learned for the next round of marketplace renewals.
There’s been some hand-wringing over large proposed premium increases for health plans in 2016. But it’s important to remember that rate requests vary – a lot – by insurer and location. And that these rates are only proposed. They’re subject to regulatory scrutiny, and many proposed hikes may be reduced. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Sean Miskell and Dave Cusano discuss the drivers of 2016 premiums and states’ role in keeping coverage affordable.
A provider association has recently heard from member physician offices about patients enrolled in “church plans” in which preventive services, such as child well visits and immunizations, aren’t covered. What are these church plans and why don’t they have to comply with the Affordable Care Act insurance reforms? CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette has some answers.
In the wake of formal complaints that insurers are marketing health plans with discriminatory benefit designs, state insurance regulators are under increasing pressure to subject these plans to greater scrutiny. But with limited resources and manpower, states are feeling squeezed. As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project to support states with Affordable Care Act implementation, CHIR researchers Kayla Connor and Sally McCarty created a directory of consumer organizations willing to partner with states to conduct plan analyses.
Hard to believe, but open enrollment for 2016 coverage is just four months away. As we get closer to the start of OE 2016 – November 1, 2015 to January 31, 2016 – CHIR’s Sandy Ahn highlights some of the FFM’s approach to redeterminations and re-enrollments.
On July 7 the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee held a roundtable discussion about challenges and opportunities facing the small business health insurance market. CHIR Senior Research Fellow Sabrina Corlette was invited to join the conversation about the SHOP marketplaces, self-funded plans, the change in the definition of the small group market, and more.
State insurance regulators face the challenge of sustaining staffing levels achieved thanks to Affordable Care Act rate review grants. As these grant programs wind down, state officials get some helpful advice in Sally McCarty’s account of how she dealt with a similar challenge when she was Indiana’s insurance commissioner.
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.
