Health care policy debates can often be confusing but the rapidly shifting positions in the latest tempest on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are harder to follow than a ping-pong ball. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Adam Searing, attempts to make sense of all the contradictions.
May 15th marks the official start of rate review season for health insurers’ proposed 2016 premium rates. Sabrina Corlette has this preview.
Discussion of new “superwaiver” authority is a hot topic among many state and health policy circles. The Affordable Care Act allows states to modify key reforms beginning in 2017 through a so-called 1332 waiver application. States could also choose to coordinate this waiver with Medicaid and/or CHIP reforms through a 1115 waiver. CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Joan Alker of the Center for Children and Families assess the waiver process outlined to date and the need for transparency and stakeholder input on the critical policy decisions that will be required.
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 out from Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, finds that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate has had little impact on enrollment in work-based coverage in the past year. Our Georgetown Center for Children and Families colleague, Cathy Hope, takes a look.
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.
