Along with the cherry blossoms, new health policy research was in full bloom this month. In addition to filling out our March Madness brackets, the CHIR team reviewed studies on health insurance rates during the pandemic, how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) impacted women’s health coverage, and consumer access to high-quality marketplace plans.
This Mother’s Day, CHIR’s Rachel Schwab and Nia Gooding assessed the potential impact of a new legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for women. Judge Reed O’Connor has recently allowed a challenge to the ACA’s preventive services coverage provision to move forward in a U.S. district court. Invalidating this provision could jeopardize access to a broad set of preventive services for millions of women.
April’s latest health policy research is provided by CHIR’s Nia Gooding in our monthly roundup. She reviews studies on demographic characteristics of the people who fall into the ACA family glitch, trends in contraceptive use among women enrolled in high-deductible health plans after the passage of the ACA, and state policy considerations given the American Rescue Plan’s premium tax credit expansions.
The ACA expanded women’s access to comprehensive coverage. The Trump administration is seeking to overturn the law while promoting coverage options that are exempt from the ACA’s consumer protections, including short-term plans and health care sharing ministries. In a new post for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR experts examine the differences between ACA plans and the alternatives promoted by the Trump administration, finding that these products frequently exclude or severely limit coverage of services that are critical to women’s health.
The Trump administration recently released regulations allowing employers, colleges, and universities to eliminate birth-control coverage from their health-benefit plans because of religious or moral objections. CHIR expert Dania Palanker explains how these new rules will allow employers and schools to discriminate against women while undermining the importance of women’s health.
This Mother’s Day, Congress is giving mothers a new health coverage menu with options for states and insurance companies to reduce their coverage through the American Health Care Act (AHCA). The selection could make you lose your brunch.
It’s the holiday season, but rather than visions of sugar plums dancing above our heads, we have visions of mammogram machines, birth control, doctor offices, and medical bills. Prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), women faced numerous barriers obtaining affordable health care. After years of insurance industry practices like gender rating and pre-existing condition exclusions, the ACA ushered in a new era for women’s health, eliminating those discriminatory and unfair insurance practices from the insurance market.
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.
