Our very own Sabrina Corlette was invited back to the U.S. House of Representatives for the second time in a month, this time to give testimony before the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. Here are a few highlights from the May 11 hearing.
The ACA prohibits benefit limits and cost sharing that discriminate against individuals based on health status and other factors, but federal rules also stress that insurers can continue to use reasonable medical management, which would allow benefit limits based on certain circumstances. JoAnn Volk looks at what this may mean for regulators and consumers trying to tell the difference.
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.
Did you know states need to select their Essential Health Benefits (EHB) benchmark plan for 2017 in just a few weeks? If not, JoAnn Volk will tell you about the process underway and how advocates can get involved.
The Affordable Care Act includes a reform of the health insurance market that has received relatively little attention, but that’s likely to change. The provision requires a change in the definition of small group health plan, and it could have a significant impact on premiums and offers of coverage by employers. Sabrina Corlette takes a look.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services recently published a proposed regulation that signals some potentially helpful changes to the requirement that health insurers cover a set of essential health benefits. Our colleague at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, Joe Touschner, offers this overview.
Within the next several months, federal officials must decide whether to maintain or modify their “transitional” approach to implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s essential health benefits (EHB) requirements. In a new issue brief for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers examine how states have exercised their flexibility under the current EHB rules.
Health plans have been increasingly using tiered pharmacy benefit designs. These new designs raise challenges for consumers and the state insurance regulators responsible for reviewing and approving plans for sale. CHIR faculty members Sally McCarty and David Cusano explore these issues in a new brief for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s State Health Reform Assistance Network.
Last week the state of Washington finalized rules banning insurers from imposing benefit-specific waiting periods on policyholders. Sandy Ahn, a new Research Fellow at CHIR, reviews the rule and how it’s likely to affect consumers.
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.
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.
