Marketplace
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Children Need Exchange Coverage Too
By Maureen Hensley-Quinn, National Academy for State Health Policy As state and federal government officials race to meet Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation deadlines much of their attention has been focused on adults who will be newly eligible for health coverage. Health insurance exchanges (exchanges) or marketplaces need to be prepared to serve children’s needs as…
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Obama Administration Releases FY2014 Budget
By Tara Mancini President Obama (finally) released his budget recommendations for fiscal year 2014. Although the budget was postponed for two months, there aren’t too many surprises here as we’ve heard many of his considerations during the delay. The good news is that as promised the budget does not contain any significant cuts to Medicaid,…
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Senate HELP Committee Examines Upcoming Market Changes Under ACA
It was a strange feeling testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee., given that, about 15 years ago, I was sitting on the other side of the dais as a staff member of the Committee. Today, my role was dramatically different, as I was called to speak as a witness at a…
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Federal Navigator Funding Opportunity Announced
At long last, organizations can now apply for federal navigator funding in 33 states where the federal government will run the Health Insurance Marketplace or there is a State Partnership Exchange. The program will fund a total of $54 million dollars in grants (actually cooperative agreements). Grants will range from $600,000 to $8.1 million based…
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CMS Releases Proposed Standards for Navigators and In-Person Assisters
Organizations interested in applying for navigator grants and other stakeholders will want to take a close look at the proposed rules on navigator conflict of interest, training and meaningful access standards. While subject to a 30-day comment period and final rulemaking, the proposed rules add some clarity regarding expectations for federally-funded navigators and in-person assisters…
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Vermont Preliminary Rate Filings Offers First Look at Exchange Pricing
By Christine Monahan, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms In the midst of much analysis of the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on health insurance premiums, Vermont became the first state to release preliminary rate filings for plans to be sold in their health insurance exchange in 2014. The good news is that people generally haven’t…
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CMS Issues Guidance on Arkansas Type Premium Assistance Plans
So as Tricia Brooks blogged about yesterday while I was taking the day off, CMS issued some interesting Q and A’s last Friday on how a state might consider taking a premium assistance approach to expanding their Medicaid program. The Q and A’s, to my mind, were a helpful contribution to the ongoing discussions in…
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Diving Deep on Two New Rate Studies
By Christine Monahan and Katie Keith, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms With many of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) most significant reforms expected to go into effect in 2014, policymakers and the media have increasingly turned their attention to the law’s price tag for consumers. Republican lawmakers, for example, sounded the alarm about…
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Building the New Insurance Marketplaces: Future of One State-Based Exchange Threatened
By Sabrina Corlette, Center on Health Insurance Reforms The District of Columbia is not technically a state, but it is one of the few that plans to run its own health insurance marketplace (called the “Exchange”) under the Affordable Care Act. Early on, however, DC planners realized that they had a very small pool from…
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New Options for Young Invincibles
By Christina Postolowski, Young Invincibles The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will provide enormous new benefits to young Americans – in fact, it already has. Last month, Gallup released a poll showing that the uninsured rate for young adults under 26 decreased yet again, a drop of six percent since 2009. The drop is due in…
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CMS Q&A Shines Light on “Arkansas Plan”
Just in time for the holiday weekend, CMS issued a Q&A regarding the state option to expand Medicaid by using premium assistance to buy coverage through a qualified health plan in the new insurance marketplaces. Over the past few weeks, “the Arkansas plan” worked itself into a media frenzy and had Medicaid stakeholders concerned over…
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A Look At What State Legislatures Are Up To On Navigators
By Katie Keith, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms In addition to our efforts to track state legislation on the Affordable Care Act’s market reforms (check out our most recent blog on the 2014 market reforms here), our team is also tracking legislation that relates to exchange establishment and development. In this blog—brought to…
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New Resource Looks at Premium Assistance Options in Medicaid/CHIP
Yesterday my new report for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured was released called Premium Assistance in Medicaid and CHIP: An Overview of Current Options and Implications of the Affordable Care Act. The paper examines how statutory changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act and the Affordable Care Act have changed…
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New Study Finds Failure to Expand Medicaid Could be Costly for Employers
A new study provides states with yet another reason to accept federal funding to extend Medicaid coverage to more uninsured people. A study by Jackson Hewitt Tax Service found that states that fail to accept the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid option will leave employers exposed to higher shared responsibility payments than employers in states that…
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Consumer Advocates Respond to HHS’s Model Application
By Jocelyn Guyer Let’s just say it straight out. Congress handed the Administration a Mt. Everest-sized challenge when it said they must develop a simple, streamlined model application for enrollment in all possible sources of ACA coverage – Exchange coverage, Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTCs), Medicaid and CHIP. It would be hard enough to figure…
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Replacing ARKids First with Exchange Coverage Would Put Children – and Arkansas’s Success – at Risk
Like most health policy folks, I have been watching developments in my home state of Arkansas with much interest. Recent media reports have discussed interest among state leaders to use Medicaid to purchase plans on the exchange, also known as the marketplace that will make private insurance available to many uninsured Arkansans starting next year…
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Final Rule Sets Insurance Market Reforms
By Joe Touschner In addition to providing authority to expand Medicaid and establish health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act works to improve health care coverage by introducing key reforms to how private health plans are offered and sold, mostly in the individual and small group markets. A recent final rule from HHS clarifies a…
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Finding the Pot of Gold at the End of the Navigator Rainbow!
News that a new proposed rule on Navigators is under review at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) hopefully means it won’t be long before we see model navigator training, conflict of interest and privacy standards. With any luck, release of the proposed standards should pave the way for the federal navigator grant solicitation.…
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National League of Cities Receives Funding from Atlantic Philanthropies to Help Cities Improve Outreach and Enrollment
By Wesley Prater The National League of Cities (NLC) recently received a grant by Atlantic Philanthropies to conduct a three-year project, focused primarily on helping cities expand access to Medicaid and CHIP. The project will provide technical assistance and grants to help cities develop outreach and enrollment campaigns. Request for Proposals (RFPs) will be released…
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Assister Types Abound: But Where Oh Where Have All the In-Person Assisters Gone?
Last summer in a refresh of the exchange establishment grants, CMS quietly offered federal funding for a new category of assisters, called “in-person assisters” (IPAs). In November, I summarized what we did and didn’t know about IPAs in this blog post. In a nutshell, IPAs are intended to help exchanges meet their requirement to…