Marketplace
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Small Business and the ACA: Survey Debunks Opponents Claims
Small employers are often portrayed in the media as down on the Affordable Care Act, anxious that it will raise their costs and expose them to greater regulation. And opponents of the law like to claim that it will “kill jobs” and cause people to lose the coverage they have. Of course, providing health insurance…
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Medicaid Enrollment is Up – as Expected
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Media reports have expressed surprise, even concern, that early enrollment in Medicaid under health reform has outpaced enrollment in the new health insurance marketplaces so far. But, that was expected to happen, even before the well-documented technical problems affecting HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace website. The fact is, the…
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Helping Consumers Understand Their Coverage Options from Coast to Coast
By Sarah Dash, Kevin Lucia, and Justin Giovannelli of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms To help consumers enroll in the recently opened health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act created outreach and consumer assistance positions such as “navigators,” in-person assisters, and certified application counselors. Although awareness of the marketplaces and the financial help they may offer has…
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And Another Thing (or two) On Inaccurate Reporting About Medicaid and the ACA …
Perhaps the most egregious error I have seen in recent reporting on Medicaid enrollment and this ACA is from a recent report in CBS News. A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that…
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Reality Check: Interest in New Coverage Options and Support for Medicaid Expansion Strong
Amidst all the noise, a new Commonwealth Fund survey provides a helpful reality check that focuses our attention back where it should be: on actual uninsured Americans and how they are approaching the new coverage options available to them. This information is super-current and comes directly from a survey of Americans and not from state…
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Strong Medicaid Enrollment So Far No Surprise to Me
I was going to write this blog earlier in the week but got waylaid by meetings, meetings and more meetings! Today I wake up and see a front-page story in the Washington Post: Medicaid Tops Private Plans in Tallies of New Sign-Ups. It’s not very often that you see a front page story on Medicaid…
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New Guidance on Individual Mandate: New Hardship Exemption for Those Who Enroll at the End of the Initial Enrollment Period
By Tara Mancini While open enrollment for Marketplace plans extends to March 31, 2014, there’s been some concern that an earlier date—February 15—marked the deadline for those without coverage to sign up to avoid tax penalties for going without insurance. On Monday, CMS released additional guidance on the ACA’s individual shared responsibility requirement to address…
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Under Pressure: An Update on Restrictive State Insurance Marketplace Consumer Assistance Laws
By Justin Giovanelli, Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms To help consumers enroll in the recently opened health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act created outreach and consumer assistance positions such as “navigators,” in-person assisters, and certified application counselors. Though they are subject to uniform federal standards, in practice, these programs range widely from…
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The Administration’s New Welcome Mat for Immigrants: “It’s Safe to Apply”
By Dinah Wiley In previous blogs, I’ve described the reluctance of immigrant families to enroll in Medicaid, CHIP, or marketplace insurance and subsidies. The chief worry for a mixed-status household is whether a health insurance application will trigger immigration enforcement, resulting in “removal” (deportation) of a member of the family who would be separated from…
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Policy Cancellations – Another Tempest in a Teapot?
By Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms There’s been a lot of breathless journalism lately – with each day’s events apparently a referendum on the success – or failure – of the Affordable Care Act. One of the latest story lines involves people with individual health insurance policies receiving policy…
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Finding Information on 2014 Premiums and Tax Credits
By Joe Touschner As the Administration continues to improve Healthcare.gov, families, consumer assisters, advocates, and others may be looking for other sources of information about what plans will be available through marketplaces in 2014 and what they will cost after taking premium tax credits into account. Fortunately, there are some resources available from HHS and…
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Healthcare.Gov Technical Problems Aside, the Show Must Go On
At the three-week mark, it’s time to admit that the problems with Healthcare.Gov are more than opening day jitters and huge lines at the box office. On one hand, the sheer number and complexity of the business functions that Healthcare.Gov is intended to perform require extremely sophisticated and high-performing software and hardware. On the other…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Putting Out the Welcome Mat & Encouraging Enrollment, Part II
By Dinah Wiley In Part I of this blog series, I noted that immigrants have unique concerns about signing up for health insurance, and are less likely than citizens to do so, and that blog addressed confidentiality concerns of immigrant families. The privacy concerns are paramount, yet a mixed-status family will also wonder if they…
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Kaiser Report Finds More Than 5 Million Will Fall Into Coverage Gap Created by States Failing to Expand Medicaid
A federally-funded Medicaid option for more uninsured adults is an important cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, however, an estimated 5,161,820 uninsured individuals will be left behind because they live in states that have not yet accepted the Medicaid expansion option. Those who fall into the gap earn too much to qualify under their state’s…
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Measuring ACA Enrollment: Lessons from Medicare Part D
The criticisms continue to roll in, with critics saying that the websites do not work well, that people are visiting the website but not enrolling, and that there are too few enrollees. What expectations are reasonable? What can we learn from the introduction of the Medicare Part D drug benefit in the fall of 2005?…
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New Urban Paper Compares Eligibility for Assistance Across States
By Martha Heberlein Some exciting new state-by-state data from the Urban Institute gives states a better sense of how many people might be eligible for and enroll in the expanded coverage options under the ACA, finding that more than 25 million uninsured are eligible for some sort of assistance securing coverage. As expected, there’s large…
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How Does ACA’s First Week Compare to Medicare Part D’s?
Since the official opening of health insurance marketplaces on October 1, there have been reports of broad interest and high traffic to marketplace websites, but also of various glitches and delays with those websites. Back in the fall of 2005, there was a similar launch for Medicare’s new Part D prescription drug benefit. Does this…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Encouraging Enrollment
By Dinah Wiley Immigrants who are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, compared to their citizen counterparts, are less likely to sign up for health coverage. Why is this so? It’s true that newcomers to the U.S. are more healthy than native-born Americans, for a few years at least. Yet when immigrants are offered private insurance…
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Medicaid.Gov Posts State Profiles, Verification Plans and MAGI Eligibility Levels
Happy open enrollment day! If you are looking for detailed information on your state’s plans for implementing the new streamlined application and ACA eligibility requirements, check out this link, then click on your state. Although some of the information is in progress for some states, it’s great to have a wealth of information in one…
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Thousands Have Already Signed Up for Coverage
I am very excited about the reports coming in– thousands of people have signed up for health coverage already. In Kentucky, a Southern state which has been one of the few to embrace health reform, more than 24,000 people had come to the website of Kentucky’s Healthcare Connection and 1,000 applications had been processed by…