The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires states to set-up health insurance exchanges. Once up and running, exchanges are expected to connect approximately 29 million people to coverage. Their design should help individuals and small businesses shop for and purchase health insurance, access premium and cost-sharing subsidies, and facilitate health plan competition based […]
By Martha Heberlein Back in January, a group of current and former Republican Governors sent a letter to Congress asking for “flexibility” to ignore the stability protections in the Affordable Care Act. Today, the Energy and Commerce Committee is holding a hearing that will focus, in part, on this request. Let’s look a little more closely […]
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities In a previous post, I explained why block-granting Medicaid or otherwise capping its funding is no solution to rising costs. It’s also a really bad deal for states, as a report CBPP released on February 23 explains. A block grant would shift significant financial risks and costs […]
By Bob Jacobson, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families The eyes of the nation have turned to Wisconsin as an epic struggle drags on between Governor Scott Walker on one side and unions representing public employees and their supporters on the other. For readers who have been on vacation for the last few weeks: Gov. […]
By Jocelyn Guyer Today, CMS issued a letter and a frequently asked questions document that outlines how the Administration will work with states to implement the Affordable Care Act’s stability protections. As readers of Say Ahhh! know, a number of Republican Governors have been pressuring HHS to relax these stability protection or “maintenance of effort” […]
The Department of Health and Human Services just announced $200 million in grants to states to enhance their capacity to review health insurance premium increases. This is good news for families struggling with health insurance premium increases year after year. As Michael Miller of Community Catalyst put it during the HHS conference call, “families’ incomes […]
