Marketplace
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Multi-State Plans Unveiled
They’re finally here – the Multi-State Plans (MSPs). Intended by Congress to inject new competition into state health insurance markets, the MSP options were unveiled yesterday by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The agency promises that consumers will have more than 150 MSP options in 30 states and the District of Columbia. Within the next four years, there should…
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Answering Your Questions on Certified Application Counselors
I’ve been getting lots of questions on certified application counselors, so I thought it was time to loop back to this issue and try to answer a few based on what I’ve heard along the way. How long does it take to receive approval of a CAC application? HHS has received several thousand applications from…
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Health Insurance for Immigrant Families
The webinar examines changes in health reform law and regulations that affect the eligibility of immigrants and the access barriers they face, particularly when part of mixed-status families. It also looks at which rules have not changed, showing a snapshot of the landscape of coverage options for immigrant families as of 2013. Download the recording
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Delaying the Individual Mandate is a Bad Idea
The Urban Institute released a handy explainer this week, detailing why proposals to delay the individual mandate are a bad idea. Proponents of such a delay argue that if the Obama Administration delayed the employer mandate, they should also delay the individual mandate. However, unlike the employer mandate, the individual mandate is like a leg on a three-legged stool.…
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Tech Tuesday: The Wish List for Phase II of the Medicaid and CHIP Performance Indicators
Last week, I blogged about the release of phase I performance indicators requiring states to report the data elements “most critical to measuring the outcomes of the Medicaid and CHIP eligibility and enrollment process.” I am already thinking about phase II of the Medicaid and CHIP performance metrics but the most obvious question at this…
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Narrow Networks: Who’s Looking Out for Consumers?
By Max Farris and Sally McCarty, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Robert Pear’s article in today’s New York Times describes what some see as a trend toward health insurers offering narrow network plans on the federal and state exchanges. Whether consumers will have adequate networks through which they can easily access providers depends on how…
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What Can States Do to Ensure Insurers Don’t Limit Consumer Choice?
This morning, the New York Times ran a front page story headlined: “Lower Premiums to Come at Cost of Fewer Choices“. While I feel for the editors that have to explain such a complex topic in half the characters of a tweet, that headline will certainly trigger a chorus of “I told you so’s” from…
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Medicaid Expansion Round 2: From Simplicity to Complexity
As a practical matter, I think accepting 100% federal funding to extend Medicaid coverage to adults and getting that coverage up and running is easier than setting up a state-based marketplace, implementing the new insurance reforms and tax credits etc etc. States obviously already have Medicaid programs up and running – in many cases with…
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Failure to Accept Medicaid Option Harms Hospitals
Two items caught my eye last week that reminded me of the domino effect a state’s rejection of federal funding for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid option can have on its health care system. First, a new report “States Refusing Medicaid Expansion Fuel Worst Losses” by Bloomberg’s Brian Chappatta explained that hospitals and health care…
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American Community Survey Reveals Another Decline in Uninsured Rate for Kids
By Tara Mancini It’s a beautiful day here in the nation’s capital and the sunny weather seems to match the uplifting news this morning that estimates from the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS) reveal that both the national uninsured rate overall (14.8%) and the national uninsured rate for children (7.2%) dropped by a small but…
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How Have Immigrant Families Fared (So Far) Under Health Reform?
By Dinah Wiley Immigrant families are among the most in need of health reform, with high rates of uninsurance and poverty despite employment rates as high as those of citizen-headed households. How will these families fare under health reform? Though a few federal rules are still undecided, we can safely say that many non-citizens will…
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Delaying ACA’s Individual Mandate Would Result in Millions More Uninsured and Higher Premiums
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Congressional Republican leaders are discussing proposals to attach a one-year delay of major elements of health reform, including the individual mandate, to legislation required to avert a government shutdown or prevent a default on the nation’s debt. We’ve issued a paper explaining why policymakers should firmly reject any such effort…
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Tech Tuesday: Electronic Notices Are Coming to Medicaid and CHIP, But Maybe Not Until 2015
In looking again at the “cats and dogs regulations” released in July, I see that CMS has removed any ambiguity about providing Medicaid and CHIP notices electronically. The health care law directs states to provide consumers with the option to receive notices in a secure, electronic format in lieu of written notices by regular mail.…
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Navigators Should Not Let Politics Thwart Their Important Work
Yet another attempt in a very long line of efforts to delay or derail the health care law came in the waning hours of summer after many people had already checked out for the Labor Day weekend. About half of the 104 organizations that were awarded federal navigator grants received an official demand from ranking…
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New Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Data Indicates Slowdown in Growth but Continued Impact of Recession Lingers
By Tara Mancini The latest data from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured on Medicaid and CHIP enrollment indicate that growth continues to slow after several years of higher recession-fueled enrollment increases. Between June 2011 and June 2012, the growth rate in Medicaid was 2.5%, slightly less than a third of the growth…
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Poverty Itself Makes Everything Harder, Even Filling Out Forms
Anyone who has been up all night with an infant (or reading health reform regulations), knows how foggy you feel the next day, and how hard it is to even complete simple tasks. A new study in Science shows that the condition of being poor causes a cognitive drop similar to pulling an all-nighter.…
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Health Plans Get Creative Skirting the ACA
You have to give them credit – health insurers are showing just how creative they can be at shirking their obligation to provide new consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act. Just last month Christine Monahan and I documented how health insurers are taking advantage of a legal loophole that allows them to escape compliance…
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More Clarity on When Medicaid is Minimum Essential Coverage
By Joe Touschner Minimum essential coverage (not to be confused with the essential health benefits) is an important concept in the Affordable Care Act. Those who have minimum essential coverage (MEC) satisfy the individual responsibility requirement, that is, they meet the ACA’s individual mandate to have health insurance. Those who don’t have MEC other than…
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Good News for the Unbanked: CMS Requires Marketplace Issuers to Accept Multiple Forms of Payment
Earlier this year, a number of organizations raised concerns about the lack of flexible payment methods in the new health insurance marketplaces that would provide a way for the “unbanked,” – people without checking or savings accounts – to make their premium payments. Our friend, Julie Silas, at Consumers Union, authored this helpful brief to…
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Updates on Consumer Assistance: Navigator Grants and Training
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms This has been a busy month for those of us eager for robust consumer assistance to help people enroll in the new health insurance marketplaces, which launch on October 1, 2013. First, the Administration released a set of on-line training materials for certified application counselors (CACs) and in-person assisters.…