Though open enrollment into the new health insurance marketplaces is a distant memory and folks are gearing up for round 2 later this year, consumers continue to turn to Navigators and other assisters with questions. JoAnn Volk shares – and provides answers to – a selection of questions we’ve been getting from the field.
The Affordable Care Act envisions that the new health insurance marketplaces will encourage plans to provide better quality, more cost-effective care. But achieving that is easier said than done. A recent report by CHIR faculty Sarah Dash and Sabrina Corlette charts action by the state-based marketplaces to achieve quality improvements and assesses future prospects. Ashley Williams provides an overview.
We’re about 110 days away from open enrollment into coverage for 2015. In recent guidance, CMS has revealed its plans for plan renewals and eligibility re-determinations for people enrolled in plans through the marketplaces. Our Georgetown colleague Tricia Brooks takes a look at the envisioned process and some of the benefits – and pitfalls – for consumers.
On July 16 the Obama Administration published guidance for insurers in the federally facilitated marketplaces (FFMs) regarding a requirement that they provide a 90-day grace period to policyholders who fail to pay premiums. Sabrina Corlette reviews the new rules and offers some advice for consumers who might find themselves in this situation.
It’s getting to be a summer tradition: a new set of court decisions on the Affordable Care Act. This past week two courts reached opposite conclusions on whether the IRS can issue subsidies through the federally facilitated marketplaces, affecting potentially 7.3 million people. Research Fellow Sandy Ahn talks about these decisions and their impact on the ACA’s ability to address the “three As” of health coverage: access, affordability, and adequacy.
Today, Out2Enroll—a nationwide campaign dedicated to connecting LGBT people with their health insurance coverage options—released a new report exploring the extent to which this year’s outreach and enrollment efforts met the needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Katie Keith provides an overview of the report’s major findings in this guest post.
One of the key consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act is the requirement that plans must have a limit on out-of-pocket costs. However, there are limits on the limit, and the details matter. Consumers who need a non-formulary drug run smack into one of those limits, but they have options to get the drugs they need as a covered benefit. JoAnn Volk provides a run down.
The ACA includes numerous consumer protections designed to remedy shortcomings in the availability, affordability, adequacy, and transparency of individual market insurance. However, because states continue to be the primary regulators of health insurance and implementers of these requirements, consumers are likely to experience some of these new protections differently, depending on where they live. CHIR’s latest issue brief finds that consumers nationwide will enjoy improved protections in each area targeted by the reforms.
Regulations issued last month by the Department of Health and Human Services show that laws in more than a dozen states may be invalid because they go too far in restricting the work of consumer assistance personnel certified under the Affordable Care Act. In a blog post published by The Commonwealth Fund, Justin Giovannelli, Kevin Lucia, and Sabrina Corlette discuss these new rules and how they affect state efforts to regulate consumer assisters.
This July the Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law is offering its first-ever summer program on the Affordable Care Act. The week long program promises a deep dive look at the legal and policy implications of the law and its implementation. Program co-director Sabrina Corlette shares a sneak peek at the faculty and agenda.
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.
