Small-business owners face unique challenges covering their employees; to lower barriers and increase options, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) created the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP). In a new blog published by The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Emily Curran, Sabrina Corlette, and Kevin Lucia evaluate the current state of these marketplaces three years into implementation.
Limited networks have become increasingly common on ACA marketplaces, comprising almost half of all offerings during the first two years of the exchanges. In a new policy brief for Health Affairs, CHIR experts Justin Giovannelli, Kevin Lucia, and Sabrina Corlette examine what the states and the federal government are doing to ensure that marketplace plan networks are adequate and transparent.
What does coverage look like for children on the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces? A new report from Georgetown experts Kelly Whitener, JoAnn Volk, Sean Miskell and Joan Alker examines at the adequacy of coverage, affordability of coverage, and access to providers. This blog post provides some of their topline findings.
Two-and-one-half years in, how do we assess the success and stability of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces? Much ink has been spilled over the high-profile exit of UnitedHealthcare, but to gain a broader perspective, CHIR experts examined the first quarter earnings calls and regulatory filings for some of the largest, publicly traded insurers that participate in the marketplaces. Their latest article for the Commonwealth Fund shares what they learned.
The Commonwealth Fund has updated its interactive 50-state assessment of health system performance. Our colleague with Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Sean Miskell, takes a look.
In the wake of the high-profile closures and departures of some health plans from the individual market, a close analysis of plan participation in the state-based marketplaces demonstrates that consumer choices remain relatively stable. In CHIR’s latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, Emily Curran, Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia assess insurers’ participation in the state-run marketplaces and the policy levers in place to help foster competition.
High drug prices have been in the news lately, and consumers are bearing an ever-greater burden of those drug prices through health plan cost-sharing. In their latest post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers Sabrina Corlette, Ashley Williams and Justin Giovannelli analyze state policies to try to protect consumers from high drug costs.
Federal Affordable Care Act rules require the states to revisit the standard scope of benefits for individual and small business health plans – called essential health benefits or EHB – and determine whether revisions are needed. In a new blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts examine how the states approached this task, and what it might mean for consumers.
Whether their exchange is state-based or federally facilitated, many state policymakers are seeking ways to realize the advantages of a state-run marketplace model while minimizing, so far as possible, the financial and operational burdens of building or maintaining one. In a new issue brief for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers explore the experiences of four states that established their own exchanges but have operated them with support from the federal HealthCare.gov eligibility and enrollment platform.
The Affordable Care Act’s new health insurance marketplaces could be critical sources of data about how people access and use coverage. Yet, to date, the marketplaces have released varying degrees of information, with little uniformity or consensus over what data should be collected and how. In our latest post for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers Sean Miskell, Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia examine data collection and reporting by the health insurance marketplaces.
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.
