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.
Summer is over, but health policy researchers have hardly taken a vacation. In August’s research round up, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe looks into studies examining specialty drug coverage across commercial plans, the effects of the Affordable Care Act on people of different income levels, individual market premium predictions, employer-sponsored high-deductible health plans, and surprise medical bills in employer-sponsored insurance.
Health policy researchers are keeping busy, assessing the impact of recent and potential state and federal actions. CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe digs into new research on how interruptions in insurance coverage impact chronic disease management, the debate over the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate, the innovative ways that California is keeping its risk pool healthy, characteristics of the uninsured in the U.S., and the coverage and premium effects of state-based individual mandates.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on July 10, 2018 that they would fund up to $10 million for Navigator programs in the 34 federally facilitated marketplace states in 2018, an over 80 percent cut from the program’s original funding. CMS is also encouraging applicants to educate consumers about plans that don’t meet Affordable Care Act standards. CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe explains the effects these changes could have on consumers and the market.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) announced that they will sue the administration over the final association health plan rule released by the Department of Labor on June 19, arguing that it is unlawful, will result in fewer consumer protections, and “invite[s] fraud, mismanagement and deception.” CHIR’s Emily Curran dives into association health plans and their complicated history.
State officials, insurers, and consumer advocates and assisters are gearing up for a hectic 2019 enrollment season as federal uncertainty threatens the stability of the individual market. CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe dives into research about how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has affected consumers’ access to insurance coverage and care. She also looks at research on reasons behind this year’s increased premium rates and last year’s surprisingly successful Open Enrollment season.
A handful of states are moving forward with plans to implement state-level individual health insurance mandates in light of Congress’s recent elimination of the federal mandate’s financial penalty. In their latest post for The Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, CHIR experts Dania Palanker, Rachel Schwab and Justin Giovannelli analyze new sate individual mandate laws and highlight innovative models that were considered in states.
In a report released this week by the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), Georgetown researchers Dania Palanker, JoAnn Volk and Kevin Lucia document the many ways that individual market plans available before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) fell far short of providing adequate, affordable coverage for people with mental illness and substance use disorders.
George K. Hoppe was the owner of a small architectural firm in Lavallette, New Jersey. He designed beach homes along the shore, funeral homes, retail buildings, and the Ocean County Boy Scouts building in New Jersey. Being uninsured cut his life short. To honor her dad on Father’s Day, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe tells his story.
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.
