Now that open enrollment into the new health insurance marketplaces has ended, options for consumers seeking to change plans are more limited, even for those enrolled in plans that don’t cover essential health benefits, such as maternity services. Sabrina Corlette tackles one such situation in her latest blog post.
While narrow provider networks are by no means new to health insurance, the practice has received renewed attention as plans participating in the marketplaces turn to network design to keep premium costs low. While consumers benefit from more affordable insurance, overly narrow networks can risk the quality of care consumers receive and increase their out-of-pocket costs. In this blog post originally published by Health Affairs, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and JoAnn Volk and the Urban Institute’s Robert Berenson and Judy Feder discuss the cost-access trade-offs for consumers and offer a few recommendations for policymakers.
In March, the Obama administration extended for two additional years a policy allowing states to permit insurers to renew health plans that are not compliant with the Affordable Care Act. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers Kevin Lucia, Sabrina Corlette, and Ashley Williams document states’ decisions on whether or not to allow the extension of non-compliant plans and the implications for 2015 premiums, SHOP enrollment, and consumer protection.
A recent complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights against four Florida insurers targets them for violating the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition against discrimination. CHIR expert Sally McCarty evaluates the complaint and its implications for consumers and state insurance regulators.
In response to actions by some health plans to impose benefit-specific waiting periods for coverage of serious health conditions, such as organ transplants, the Obama Administration recently issued guidance to prohibit the practice and protect consumers from discriminatory benefit design. Georgetown Law Center’s Sandy Ahn reviews the new guidance and the impact for consumers in this guest post.
The Obama Administration has finalized rules to protect consumers by regulating the marketing and sale of fixed indemnity policies. Sabrina Corlette provides an overview of the final rule and highlights some outstanding questions.
The Obama Administration has released final rules curtailing state laws that overly restrict the ability of navigators and certified application counselors to effectively enroll people into new coverage options through the health insurance marketplaces. Our Georgetown University Center for Children and Families colleague, Tricia Brooks, provides the overview of the rule and what it means for consumer assisters.
Recent legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives attempts to fix a problem in the Affordable Care Act for a relatively small group of people with health coverage who live overseas. But in the process it creates loopholes that could undermine consumer protections for a much larger group of people. Our colleague at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, Sonya Schwartz, provides this assessment.
We’re starting to learn more about health insurance premium rates for 2015. Whether they go up, down, or stay the same, many will view them as a referendum on the ACA. Sabrina Corlette shares two new resources that help improve our understanding of the factors that drive premium rates.
Now that open enrollment is over, consumers are starting to raise questions about their coverage. One such question from Georgia illustrates one of the challenges consumers may face – a network that changes mid-year. JoAnn Volk takes a look at some options.
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.
