The Basic Health Program was included in the Affordable Care Act to provide states with an alternative coverage option for low-income adults. The Obama Administration recently proposed rules to govern the program. Our colleague Sonya Schwartz at Georgetown’s Center for Children for Children and Families suggests a few improvements to make the program more effective for consumers.
Implementation of the President’s proposed fix for health insurance policy cancellations rests with state officials and insurance companies. Many states opting not to pursue the policy fix are those who have invested the most in the success of the Affordable Care Act. In their latest blog for The Commonwealth Fund, Kevin Lucia, Katie Keith, and Sabrina Corlette evaluate the policy and legal factors underpinning states’ decisions.
Almost two months into open enrollment, Navigators and other consumer assisters must field a multitude of questions about plan options inside the marketplace and out, how individual and employer-sponsored coverage may change as a result of the ACA, and whether consumers have the coverage they need to satisfy the individual mandate. Today, CHIR released a Navigator Resource Guide that helps Navigators explain key insurance and marketplace concepts and accurately answer a wide range of questions.
The Affordable Care Act includes a range of health insurance reforms that will lead to health care costs being shared more evenly between the healthy and the sick. Some experts have pointed to concerns that in the short term, there will be premium “rate shock” for some individuals, while in the long term, exchanges will be vulnerable to adverse selection if they attract a disproportionate number of older, sicker enrollees. Under the ACA, states have considerable flexibility to implement additional strategies to manage their markets and protect consumers. In collaboration with researchers at the Urban Institute, CHIR faculty members Sabrina Corlette and Sarah Dash examine states’ strategies to make premiums more affordable and protect the exchanges from potential adverse selection.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held an oversight hearing yesterday, November 15, to discuss ACA implementation issues. CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette testified on her analysis of policy proposals to address plan cancellations. Elissa Dines listened in and offers this account.
The Obama Administration will soon release the first month enrollment figures for the new health insurance marketplaces. To put these early numbers in perspective, our Georgetown University Health Policy Institute colleague Jack Hoadley reflects on the Medicare Part D experience.
A massive consumer outreach and education effort is underway to help consumers understand their new coverage options under the Affordable Care Act. But obstacles remain, particularly in states with federally facilitated marketplaces. In the second of a two-part series of blogs for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR faculty members Sarah Dash, Kevin Lucia, and Justin Giovannelli examined the range of outreach efforts across the states.
Seventeen states have enacted rules for health insurance marketplace navigators that could hinder their ability to provide consumer assistance. In a blog series published by the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Justin Giovannelli, Kevin Lucia and Sarah Dash take a closer look at these laws and their impact on outreach and enrollment.
The early problems with the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces are frustrating. But if history is any guide, they will be temporary – and we can learn from them. Gene Lewit, a CHIP expert who lived through that law’s roll out in the 1990s, blogs about his new report, which finds that enrollment in new major health insurance expansions will be slow at first and expose problems that even the most careful planning might not have anticipated.
One of the latest ACA story lines involves people with individual health insurance policies receiving policy cancellation notices. Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia dissect this emerging issue – as well as the protections and new coverage options available.
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.
