This November, we at CHIR celebrated Thanksgiving with a Research Buffet. CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe digs into research that looks at issues including health insurance literacy, the financial implications of subsidized health insurance, the impact of the Affordable Care Act on American workers, and Medicare Advantage.
The Center on Health Insurance Reforms held its first-ever Tweetchat in light of the release of our updated Navigator Resource Guide. We asked navigators, assisters, and consumers to ask us questions they had about Open Enrollment or health insurance generally. Here are five questions participants had about health insurance.
From price variation in hospital services paid by private insurers to how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has affected part-time workers, researchers have brought us plenty of interesting health policy findings this month. In October, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe breaks down studies that examine coverage trends, health care costs, immigrant health, and insurers’ marketplace participation and financial performance.
In CHIRblog’s April installment of What We’re Reading, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe digs into reports that highlight 2018 Affordable Care Act enrollment outcomes and policies that will affect 2019, the risks of short-term health plans, the impact of the ACA’s marketplaces on individuals with chronic health conditions, and the rising prevalence of health savings accounts and high-deductible health plans.
With the close of Open Enrollment for federally run marketplaces last week, preliminary reports suggest this year’s total sign-ups will be fewer than prior years. The Administration also recently released data that calls into question the value of Navigators, noting that they accounted for less than 1 percent of customers who were signed up by federally funded navigator organizations in 2016. CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe explains how these data fail to tell the whole story.
Leaving a job comes with many challenges, not the least of which is securing new health insurance. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) offers employees continued coverage on their job-based plan, but losing the employer subsidies could cause some to turn to the individual market to find lower premiums. With a Senate bill under consideration that reduces federal subsidies and strips away vital consumer protections, anyone leaving employer coverage will have to make a decision today about joining an insurance market that could look vastly different six months from now. On her last day at Georgetown, CHIR’s Rachel Schwab reflects on options for coverage after leaving a job-based plan.
Job-based plans cover 150 million people in the U.S. If the ACA is repealed, they stand to lose critical consumer protections that many have come to expect of their employer plan.
A graph has been making the rounds on the internet comparing cumulative increases in deductibles since 2011 to growth in inflation, worker earnings and health insurance premiums since it was posted as part of a Wall Street Journal blog. But the graph only tells part of the story – the part that occurred after 2011. The story of increasing deductibles in employer based health insurance is a story that is over a decade in the making.
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.
