Affordable Care Act watchers are bracing themselves for another round of health plan cancellations this fall, even though Obama Administration policy allows for these plans to be continued. CHIR expert Sabrina Corlette discusses issues for consumers transitioning off of these plans and into new coverage.
Local press in D.C. recently reported on a “turf battle” between the health insurance marketplace and DC’s Department of Insurance over the review of proposed rate increases. But their roles are more complementary than conflicting. Sabrina Corlette examines how the Affordable Care Act envisions the marketplaces and state insurance departments working together to help consumers obtain better, more affordable health insurance.
A major insurance company in Minnesota recently announced it would withdraw from the state’s health insurance marketplace. What does this decision mean for the marketplace and the consumers it serves? Sabrina Corlette offers up her take.
Last week the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published final rules for the health insurance marketplaces and participating insurers to renew consumers into coverage for 2015. Our colleague from Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, discusses what the rule means for consumers and their families.
While most state-based marketplaces in 2014 are rightly focused on the operational challenges of connecting people with coverage, over time technical improvements will allow them to prioritize providing better quality, more cost-effective care to enrollees. CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette and Sarah Dash, in their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, discuss the opportunities and challenges for states working to implement the ACA’s quality improvement initiatives.
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.
We at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms are excited to share the first of an upcoming video series on timely health insurance topics. In our debut video, CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette, JoAnn Volk, and Dave Cusano provide a preview of upcoming action at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) national meeting to address concerns about network adequacy of health plans offered through the new health insurance Marketplaces.
A federal appeals court’s ruling that premium subsidies aren’t available for consumers who purchase health coverage through one of the ACA’s federally run insurance marketplaces could have drastic consequences. But policymakers in the 34 states with a federal marketplace have options for protecting their residents. In one of CHIR’s blogs for the Commonwealth Fund, Kevin Lucia and Justin Giovannelli discuss those options here.
Though open enrollment into the new health insurance marketplaces is a distant memory and folks are gearing up for round 2 later this year, consumers continue to turn to Navigators and other assisters with questions. JoAnn Volk shares – and provides answers to – a selection of questions we’ve been getting from the field.
“The rates are coming, the rates are coming.” The release of 2015 health insurance premium rates provides new fodder for the latest pronouncements on the success or failure of the Affordable Care Act. In a blog post originally published by the Health Affairs blog, Christopher Koller and Sabrina Corlette decode what’s happening with insurers’ 2015 rate requests and why.
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.
