Recent research highlights how health insurance coverage eases financial pressure on families’ budgets, particularly for low-income families. Karina Wagnerman from our sister center, the Center for Children & Families, highlights the findings from two key studies.
While there may be a respite from the push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a new report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, authored by CHIR’s JoAnn Volk and Sandy Ahn, exposes what’s at stake in the debate for cancer patients and their families. The report finds that the ACA improved access to coverage and provides significant financial protections. The report is based on more than a dozen interviews with hospital-based Financial Navigators, who work closely with cancer patients throughout their treatment and provide critical insight into the coverage experience of cancer patients.
Current federal proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act are likely to result in higher out-of-pocket costs for consumers. Six states and D.C., however, have policies to lower cost-sharing barriers to important health care services and drugs for the privately insured. In a new research brief, CHIR researchers take a closer look at some of these states’ experiences developing and implementing these policies.
New ACA rules give insurers greater flexibility to meet metal level targets and increase cost-sharing. In this post, JoAnn Volk looks at what that means for consumers and state options for implementing the rule.
In an updated article published on The Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point site, CHIR experts JoAnn Volk, Dania Palanker, Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia examine the possibility that the Trump administration will pull the plug on the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies, and discuss the potential consequences for individual health insurance markets and the consumers who rely on it.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has extended insurance coverage to 22 million people, but the law’s critics often point to the high out-of-pocket costs in some of the ACA’s marketplace health plans. And while many people do face high deductibles and cost-sharing for health care services, a recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that dramatically fewer people are struggling to pay medical bills, compared to what they faced before the ACA.
Choosing a health plan is like putting a puzzle together, you need help putting all the pieces together. This year for open enrollment, Healthcare.gov has more features to be that help for consumers so they can put the puzzle together with shopping tools and information. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn and Emily Curran summarize some of the helpful changes on Healthcare.gov.
In the debate over Medicaid expansion, most of the attention has been on families in non-expansion states who are shut out of coverage. But what about those just above the poverty line who are eligible for marketplace tax credits? A new study compares their experience to those with similar incomes in Medicaid expansion states. Sean Miskell shares the findings.
With health insurers’ rate filings looming on the horizon, many are concerned we’ll see proposed premium increases for 2017. But a report released last week demonstrates that, behind the headlines, consumers are likely to see more affordable premiums after they’ve shopped for the best deal. At the same time, another study shows that consumers’ out-of-pocket costs for health services are steadily rising. Sean Miskell has the details.
There’s no question the ACA has been successful in reducing the number of uninsured. But what has that coverage meant for helping more people obtain affordable health care services and attain financial security? CHIR researchers visited 3 diverse communities to find out. JoAnn Volk reports on a new CHIR study that tells the 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.
