In February, the Department of Health & Human Services released proposed rules affecting the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces. In response, they received close to 4,000 public comments. In the first of a series of three posts examining reactions among health care stakeholders, CHIR’s Emily Curran assesses the reaction of insurance companies.
In the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s passage, 17 states embraced the chance to set up and manage their own marketplace and design an insurance market to meet local needs. In their latest article for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts Sabrina Corlette, Emily Curran and Kevin Lucia review these states’ progress on expanding coverage and stabilizing their markets and find that they have much to lose if the law is repealed.
Change in life is unavoidable: people move, get married, change jobs and have babies. Special enrollment periods (SEPs) allow people experiencing such life changes to access marketplace coverage, often with financial assistance. Unfortunately the majority of people don’t know about them. CHIR’s Sandy Ahn takes a look at SEPs, including the administration’s current approach to SEPs and the missed opportunities to raise overall awareness of them, strengthen the risk pool, and reduce the number of uninsured.
On Monday, September 26th, CHIR’s very own Sabrina Corlette spoke at a briefing on the future of ACA marketplaces put on by the Alliance for Health Reform. Ms. Corlette joined representatives from Anthem, the American Action Forum, and Covered California to discuss the forecast for 2017 and potential policy solutions to expand coverage and access in the individual market.
The administration recently issued a proposal to smooth renewals for consumers affected by insurance company exits from the health insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Wisconsin, which has been slow to warm to the ACA, is objecting on grounds that it violates principles of “consumer choice.” CHIR’s Sandy Ahn breaks down Wisconsin’s objection and contends the administration’s proposal not only protects consumer choice, but ensures continuous health insurance coverage for consumers.
As the federal insurance marketplace moves forward to standardize health plan benefit designs, what lessons can be learned from the state marketplaces that have had similar policies in place since 2014? A new Georgetown report examines the experiences of four state-based marketplaces and finds they have largely failed to meet their policy goals.
How can we best understand the coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act? Researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health and MIT unpack the latest data from the largest household survey in the United States and share some insights.
On April 29, the Obama Administration signaled a phased-in approach to implementing the quality rating system for marketplace health plans. Officials also released a final proposal implementing the Affordable Care Act’s transparency rules. Sabrina Corlette provides an update.
Beginning in 2017, states can pursue “innovation waivers” under section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act. These waivers allow states to pursue broad alternatives or targeted fixes to the ACA. In their latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, CHIR researchers Kevin Lucia, Justin Giovannelli, Sean Miskell and Ashley Williams examine the waiver applications that have been submitted so far, as well as activity in states considering a waiver.
In the wake of the high-profile closures and departures of some health plans from the individual market, a close analysis of plan participation in the state-based marketplaces demonstrates that consumer choices remain relatively stable. In CHIR’s latest blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, Emily Curran, Justin Giovannelli and Kevin Lucia assess insurers’ participation in the state-run marketplaces and the policy levers in place to help foster competition.
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.
