Marketplace
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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.…
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Blending In-Person Assistance and Self-Service Online Applications for Health Insurance
By Gene Lewit, Stanford University Health Policy Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research The countdown to October 1 has begun, when millions will begin to enroll in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA seeks to make enrollment easier by asking states to provide online enrollment systems. These new portals are…
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While Premium Growth has Slowed, Annual Employer Survey Shows a Mixed Bag for Lower-Wage Workers
By Martha Heberlein The good news: Premium growth in 2012 was a modest 4% by historical standards, according to the annual Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust Employer Health Benefits Survey. But there’s much room for progress, especially for lower-income families. Over the last decade, the average premium for family coverage has increased 80%.…
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Nevada and West Virginia Latest to Remove CHIP Waiting Periods
As we have blogged before we were hoping that CMS was going to prohibit states operating separate state CHIP program from imposing waiting periods for children. But they didn’t, and the choice continues to fall squarely in the state’s purview. Last week we learned that two more states, Nevada and West Virginia, are now moving…
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Tech Tuesday: HHS Provides Guiding Principles for Telephone Applications
“No wrong door,” a phrase coined to explain access to all the insurance affordability programs (Medicaid, CHIP and subsidized coverage through a Health Insurance Marketplace) through a single application process, is also often used to describe the different paths to enrollment. Beginning October 1, 2013, states are expected to allow individuals to apply online, over…
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HHS Announces Navigator Awards
As October 1 fast approaches, we continue to learn more about resources available in states to help guide families through the enrollment process. Today, HHS announced recipients of $67 million in grants to fund navigators in the 33 states where the federal government will operate the insurance marketplaces. (We outlined the funding opportunity on Say Ahh!…
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Response to Sticker Shock: More Expensive Than What?
Whenever I read stories about the sticker shock that may hit some consumers when the Affordable Care Act takes effect, it reminds me that buying insurance can be more mystifying than buying a new car. There have been so many jalopies being sold in “mint condition” in the wild west of the insurance market for…
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Clearing Up Confusion About Health Reforms Out-of-Pocket Protections
By Sarah Lueck, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Recent media coverage may have sown confusion about health reform’s requirement that health insurance plans cap how much consumers can pay out-of-pocket each year for medical care. The bottom line: for many plans, the protections will take effect as scheduled in 2014. Some plans will be able…
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When One Young Person’s Life Took a Detour, the ACA Provided Help Along the Way
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms In the spring of 2011, the University of California Santa Cruz senior was sure he was so tired because he wasn’t taking care of himself – not unusual for a busy student organizer winding up his final year in college. But when his neck started swelling,…