Marketplace
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Enrollment in Healthcare.Gov Exceeds Expectations
Today the Obama Administration announced that more than 7 million people had signed up for health insurance through healthcare.gov. This exceeds projections made by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made before the famously troubled website rolled out last fall. I hope this good news will get as much coverage as the saturation coverage the website’s…
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A Limited Extension for Insurance Enrollment: Precedents from Medicare Part D
On March 25, the Administration created a grace period that will extend the March 31 Marketplace enrollment deadline for Americans who have run into roadblocks in their attempts to sign up for insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Various reporters and commenters have pointed to parallels with decisions made in 2006 around the first enrollment period for Medicare Part…
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New Tools to Help Consumers Compare Health Plans
By Christine Monahan Over the last several months, faculty and staff at CHIR and their sister Center, Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families (CCF), have been providing support and technical assistance to navigators and others assisting consumers with enrollment in the new health insurance Marketplaces.* While the enrollment process can be tricky at multiple steps,…
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People Who Have Tried to Enroll through HealthCare.Gov Get Extension Beyond March 31st
With the deadline for the initial open enrollment on March 31 looming, consumers, advocates, and assisters have been stressing over what happens to people who, for no fault of their own, have not been able to complete their enrollment on HealthCare.Gov or through the federal call center. Late yesterday, federal officials announced that through mid-April,…
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Proposed Rule Offers Relief from Over-Reaching State Navigator Laws that Restrict Consumer Assistance
Last week, CMS issued a proposed rule that describes some of the circumstances in which state laws have overstepped their bounds and interfere with the important work of navigators, non-navigator assisters and certified application counselors (collectively known as assisters). The proposed rule, coupled with the recent court ruling in Missouri that federal law preempts state…
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Individual Responsibility—What are the Rules?
By Joe Touschner With the end of open enrollment approaching, it’s a good time to review some of the rules surrounding the ACA’s individual responsibility requirement, or individual mandate. Overall, the individual mandate is intended to impose a tax penalty on those who have access to affordable health coverage yet choose to go uninsured for…
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Time for a Dental Check-up
By Joe Touschner As families have signed up for new marketplace coverage over the past several months, many questions have come up around dental benefits. I wanted to pass along some useful resources for understanding 2014 plans as well as the latest news on how marketplace dental plans will change for 2015. First, just in…
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Covering Former Foster Youth Should Be Easy But …
Sometimes, it’s the simplest provision of a law that works the best – like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health plan until 26. But youth leaving the foster care system as they transition to adulthood don’t have families to fall back on, so the ACA…
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Help for Consumers Who Faced Marketplace Glitches
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released guidance on February 27th for Marketplaces that have had technical difficulties getting consumers enrolled. The CMS guidance clarifies that if a consumer has had technical trouble trying to enroll, it could constitute an “exceptional circumstance,” and qualify the consumer for coverage (and financial help) on a…
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Last Call for State-Based Health Insurance Marketplaces
Arkansas Governor Beebe recently noted that some Republican Governors are warming to the idea of running their own health insurance marketplace. I hope that they know that their time is running out! Setting up a state-based health insurance marketplace is no small task, and unlike the Medicaid expansion decision, states that want to do it…
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Consumer Advocates Have Important Role to Play in Monitoring Provider Networks
The Affordable Care Act has helped level the playing field among insurers in terms of their ability to compete on cost in the individual and small group markets. Many insurers are turning to limited network products as a way to leverage more favorable pricing from providers, drive down unit cost, and lower premiums. Our colleagues…
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Women are Finally Receiving More Equitable Treatment When Shopping for Health Insurance
By Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms On a recent frosty morning, an article caught my eye. Like the never-ending snowstorms in the movie Frozen, it was another in a series of news stories chronicling worries about whether certain groups of people – in this case, women – are going to destabilize the risk pool…
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Navigating the Application Process for Families that Include Immigrants
Immigrant resources from a webinar for assisters, February 21, 2014, sponsored by HHS in partnership with CCF, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
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Florida is Leaving 764,000 Uncovered and Giving Up $7 Million Per Day
Editor’s Note: To listen to the webinar hosted by the Florida Philanthropic Network on this topic, visit this site. I just returned from a briefing in Tallahassee sponsored by the Florida Philanthropic Network on Medicaid where I released a new factsheet. I presented some key findings – noted below – and a terrific panel…
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It Takes Time to Reduce Emergency Room Use
By Tara Mancini Last month, another round of results were released by the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE). The examination found that emergency department (ED) use increased by 40 percent among those who were enrolled in Medicaid compared to the control group. The results raised an important and obvious question: what would ED usage look…
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Overlap Between Medicaid MCO’s, Marketplace Plans Could Smooth a Rough Edge of Health Reform
Margaret A. Murray and Jennifer Babcock, Association for Community Affiliated Plans In late January, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made public figures showing that more than three million people had enrolled in health plans offering coverage through Health Insurance Marketplaces in the last three months of 2013. Many have selected a Qualified…
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Google Maps Can Help Advocates Target Outreach Efforts
By Tara Mancini Knowing where the uninsured children are is the first step toward connecting them with coverage. In our November brief on children’s health insurance coverage, we named the 20 counties with the highest number of uninsured children. I’ve uploaded all of the 1-year and 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) data into Google maps so that you can…
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School-Based Health Centers Provide Important Access Points for Children’s Health Care
By Lorraine Gonzalez-Camastra, Children’s Defense Fund – NY As our nation moves to have more Americans gain access to health care by acquiring health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many states are looking to figure out how to meet the capacity of treating those who are newly insured. Ensuring steady access points…
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Arkansas ‘Private Option’ Model Doesn’t Make Sense for Pennsylvania
As readers of SayAhhh! know, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania is currently revising a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver proposal to extend Medicaid coverage to the newly eligible low-income adults in his state. That would be great news if it weren’t such a problematic proposal (as I have blogged about before). The state took public comments on…
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How Do Updated 2014 Federal Poverty Level Thresholds Impact Medicaid, CHIP & Premium Tax Credit Eligibility?
By Martha Heberlein Updated 2014 federal poverty thresholds were released on January 22nd and inquiring minds have been asking what they mean in terms of determining eligibility for Medicaid, CHIP, and premium tax credits. And the answer, as with so many things in our world is, “well, it depends.” Let’s start with premium tax credits…