This May, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe reviewed new studies on the effects of silver loading in the Affordable Care Act-compliant individual market, disparities in mental health access, hospital prices, and employees’ insurance cost burdens.
Since implementation of the Affordable Care Act, insurer participation in the ACA marketplaces has fluctuated. As states prepare to enter their annual rate review processes for 2020, CHIR’s Emily Curran and Justin Giovannelli interviewed officials in seven of the state-based marketplaces to understand their strategies for maintaining insurer participation in 2019 and ensuring marketplace competition in the future.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments in litigation over the future of the Affordable Care Act the week of July 8, 2019. If the plaintiffs prevail, millions could lose insurance coverage and millions more will lose preexisting condition protections. In their latest post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Emily Curran document state-level efforts to preserve the ACA’s insurance market reforms.
Short-term plans are now being sold to consumers as a replacement for Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage. However, because these plans are exempt from many consumer protections and ACA rules, a number of states have stepped up to regulate the design and marketing of these plans. In their latest issue brief for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts document recent state action to regulate short-term plans and protect their residents and markets.
Several state legislatures are considering bills to re-instate the Affordable Care Act’s preexisting condition protections in the event a federal court invalidates the law in Texas v. Azar. While no state can fully protect consumers from the fallout of a bad court decision, attempts to “bake in” the preexisting protections shouldn’t leave large loopholes for insurance companies to exploit. CHIR experts examine a Louisiana bill that would codify some, but not all, of the ACA’s insurance reforms.
April showers bring May flowers, and plenty of health policy research. This month, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe reviews studies on the burden of health care costs on families, the affordability of employer-sponsored insurance, the effects of hospital concentration on insurance premiums, and why Medicaid insurers hesitate to sell plans on the Affordable Care Act’s individual market.
On March 28, a federal district court struck down the core of the Trump administration’s new regulation regarding association health plans (AHPs). In a new work for The Commonwealth Fund, Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia examine what the ruling means for states, AHPs, and consumers enrolled in these plans.
Spring has arrived, and the research is blooming! This March, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe was buzzing around studies on direct enrollment, balance billing from air ambulance rides, affordability for middle-income consumers, and the roles of assisters and support tools.
It is hard to find a starker example of the different approaches our two political parties take to health care than the events of March 26, 2019. CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette breaks down the Trump administration’s push to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional and a comprehensive bill to expand coverage and improve affordability, introduced just hours later by leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives.
On a chilly March Tuesday in Washington, DC, with the stroke of just 22 pens, health care as we know it in the United States was changed, and you were officially signed into law. For your ninth birthday, we want to give thanks for the gifts you’ve given us over the years.
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.
