Media outlets are reporting on a trend towards narrow network health plans offered through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. Max Farris and Sally McCarty provide context for this emerging issue and discuss the state role in ensuring consumers have access to a sufficient number of primary care and specialty care physicians, facilities, and other providers.
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee held an oversight hearing to assess the Administration’s readiness for the October 1st launch of the health insurance marketplaces. The focus of the Committee quickly turned to the Navigator program. Elissa Dines has this report from a contentious hearing.
Affordable Care Act opponents are using intimidation tactics to inhibit navigators from helping consumers understand their new coverage options on the exchanges. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at some recent action in the states – and what the federal government can do to make sure consumers can get the help they need, when they need it.
It’s only 19 days to the launch of the new health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. In a recent article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Kevin Lucia and Brookings scholar Henry Aaron discuss how these new marketplaces are likely to evolve and transform the U.S. health care system. In this blog, Kevin provides some key highlights.
In yet another attempt in a very long line of efforts to delay or derail the health care law, members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee demanded that organizations awarded federal navigator grants answer multiple detailed questions and produce reams of paper documents about their grants. Our colleague at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, Tricia Brooks, takes a look at what’s driving the debate over consumer assistance and the ACA.
You have to give them credit – health insurers are showing just how creative they can be at shirking their obligation to provide new consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at one of their latest tactics.
The Affordable Care Act includes sweeping insurance reforms to improve the affordability and adequacy of coverage. However, some insurers have begun encouraging their customers to renew their coverage ahead of schedule in order to delay implementing these reforms for up to 12 months. In a post that originally appeared on the Commonwealth Fund blog, Christine Monahan and Sabrina Corlette describe how insurers are taking advantage of a loophole in the law and summarize states’ efforts to prohibit or limit the practice.
Last week was a busy week for those focused on robust consumer assistance in the new health insurance marketplaces. The Department of Health and Human Services announced new navigator grants and released training materials for navigators and other consumer assisters. Sabrina Corlette takes a look at the grantees and dives into the new training modules.
The Affordable Care Act promises consumers a more comprehensive set of health insurance benefits, but whether consumers are able to access those benefits depends in part on whether states adhere to or build upon the law’s network adequacy standards. CHIR researchers recently released a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded report evaluating current federal and state efforts to regulate plan networks. Max Farris provides an overview.
As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project to monitor implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 11 states, Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms and the Urban Institute have published a series of papers identifying key issues and challenges. Their most recent brief examines the development and review of health plans that meet the new essential health benefit standard. Sabrina Corlette provides us with some key takeaways.
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.
