Thanks to daylight savings in March, CHIR had more time to keep up with the latest health policy research. Last month, we read studies about Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans and enrollee characteristics, Georgia’s reinsurance waiver, and Oregon’s hospital price cap.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published proposed rate changes for 2024 Marketplace plans. In some states, insurers submitted rate requests earlier in the summer, alongside justifications for the proposed changes to next year’s premiums. CHIR dug into the rate requests from select states with early rate filing deadlines to see what’s behind the premiums consumers could be facing in 2024, both on- and off-Marketplace.
The Affordable Care Act brought about historic coverage gains, providing millions of Americans with vital access to comprehensive health insurance. But for many, high premiums continue to present a major barrier to coverage. States have adopted various policies to make health plans on the individual market more affordable, pursuing one approach more than others: reinsurance. In a new issue brief for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts explore the benefits and limitations of state-run individual market reinsurance programs.
For the October Research Round Up, CHIR’s Olivia Hoppe dives into studies on the potential effects of health care reform options, sustaining a low uninsured rate in California, and the effects of state-run reinsurance programs on premiums.
This year several states have taken an increasingly active role in expanding health insurance coverage, overseeing their insurance markets, and protecting consumers. Perhaps no state did more in 2019 than Colorado, which enacted a dizzying array of health insurance bills. CHIR’s Rachel Schwab takes a look in this installment of States Leaning In.
Last month, North Dakota enacted legislation to establish a state reinsurance program, and a number states are considering similar bills. To help state consumer advocates engage with state officials on reinsurance and other health insurance reform issues, Community Catalyst, with support from CHIR experts, launched a new website that will house a health insurance reform toolkit for advocates. First up: The Advocate’s Guide to Reinsurance.
It is hard to find a starker example of the different approaches our two political parties take to health care than the events of March 26, 2019. CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette breaks down the Trump administration’s push to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional and a comprehensive bill to expand coverage and improve affordability, introduced just hours later by leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As state legislatures across the country prepare to convene in 2019, improving access to affordable health coverage will likely be on the agenda. Several newly elected officials have expressed an interest in establishing a state reinsurance program, following in the footsteps of a handful of states who have utilized the Affordable Care Act’s 1332 waivers for this purpose. As reinsurance gains ground as a state-level effort to promote market stability, stakeholders can learn from the experience of states that have already implemented reinsurance programs. In a new report from Georgetown, authors Rachel Schwab, Emily Curran, and Sabrina Corlette evaluate progress in the three states that have operational reinsurance programs: Alaska, Minnesota, and Oregon.
Last month, the Department of Health & Human Services awarded $8.6 million in grants to 30 states and the District of Columbia to provide additional support to implement certain ACA market reforms, including guaranteed issue, guaranteed renewal, and the Essential Health Benefits. CHIR’s Rachel Schwab took a look at how states plan to use the federal funding, and what tops the list of state market stabilization and consumer protection priorities.
Through both inaction and design, federal policymakers have put the onus on states to ensure access to affordable, adequate health insurance. In a new work for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers are launching an interactive map that will track and describe state actions likely to affect residents’ access to individual market coverage.
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.
