Narrow network plans were common on the health insurance marketplaces in 2014. In a new issue brief for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers examine the standards states had in place to regulate plans’ provider networks in the first year of marketplace coverage and describe how states revisited their rules for year two.
Beginning this week, a new version of the change in income special enrollment period will take effect, providing a pathway to premium tax credits for some caught in the Medicaid coverage gap. JoAnn Volk provides an update on this “new and improved” SEP.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that they had fixed a technical glitch in healthcare.gov that may have cost people thousands of dollars in subsidies. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, helped to identify the problem early on and offers this take on what CMS can do to help the people affected by the error.
In their latest web video, CHIR researchers JoAnn Volk and Sabrina Corlette discuss the findings from their most recent research report, in which they analyzed consumer experiences with health insurance through the eyes of state consumer assistance programs.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has published the first indications of where it intends to take the Navigator program for the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. Some new policies could bring some much needed stability to in-person consumer assistance. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, has the details.
While the ACA has successfully resulted in 16.4 million newly insured people, we don’t yet know a lot about how that new coverage is working for them. However, state consumer assistance programs (CAPs) have the eyes and ears on the ground to help identify problems or gaps in private insurance coverage. Georgetown researchers surveyed 10 state CAPs and found many common issues for consumers’ coverage experiences, pre- and post-ACA.
Recent media articles touted the news that Senator Ted Cruz was planning to sign up for health insurance through one of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. Our colleague Sean Miskell notes that this is an example of the law working as intended, freeing people to pursue their professional hopes and dreams, without fear of losing job-based health coverage.
A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Athenahealth finds that the newly insured under the Affordable Care Act did not result in an influx of new patients for physicians. Current medical student and guest blogger Mason Weber summarizes the main findings of the report, which surveyed approximately 16,000 physicians. He also offers his own perspective as a physician-to-be about the lack of discourse on a physicians’ ability to provide care effectively within the larger healthcare reform debate.
While open enrollment for 2015 has ended, insurers and marketplaces alike are gearing up for 2016 with federal guidance outlined under the 2016 Letter to Issuers and 2016 Benefits and Payment Parameters Final Rule. Sandy Ahn summarizes some of the changes in store for 2016 health plans that affect consumers.
A recent conference hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on health system transparency allowed a diverse group of stakeholders – state and federal regulators, an insurance industry executive, a provider, and CHIR’s own Sabrina Corlette to discuss how the emergence of narrow provider networks on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces has spotlighted deficiencies in the information available for consumers to make good plan choices. Sabrina Corlette shares some of the issues debated and discussed.
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.
