Marketplace
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Florida v. Sebelius – View from Pensacola
By Anne Swerlick, Florida Legal Services Last week I had a front row seat in Judge Vinson’s Pensacola federal courtroom where arguments were heard on cross motions for summary judgment in Florida v. Sebelius. In contrast to the rather modest number of spectators in the courtroom, there was literally an army of lawyers from all…
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Texas Secedes! And Other Takeaways from the Final NAIC Votes on ACA Implementation Issues
Yesterday the NAIC Executive Committee and Plenary had their final call for the year. They had a long agenda, including passing a Model State law to create an insurance Exchange and Model Laws to implement ACA’s early insurance reforms (such as elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions for children, dependent coverage up to age 26, and restrictions on…
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Can’t Wait to See What It’s Like to Get Health Insurance Through an Exchange?
Waiting for 2014 is a bit like being a child excitedly anticipating Christmas or Hanukkah. It just can’t get here quickly enough. Thinking about the concept of “no wrong door” and streamlined, paperless enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP certainly leaves me with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. As we approach the holidays, our…
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Rate Review: States Can Help Make Health Insurance More Affordable
Thirty-nine percent increase in California. Fifty-six percent increase in Michigan. Forty-seven percent increase in Connecticut. Twenty-one percent increase in New Mexico. In recent years consumers have faced unprecedented hikes in their health insurance premiums. In many cases, these hikes are driven by the increasing costs of medical care. But what happens when an insurance company…
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Opportunity Now to Engage on Establishing a State Exchange
By Liz Arjun Last week I was at a meeting where we were joined by Joel Ario, the HHS official who is overseeing implementation of the new Health Insurance Exchanges, the vehicle that is expected to provide coverage for close to 30 million Americans in 2014. We had a chance to ask him questions and…
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VA Judge Rules Against ACA Individual Responsibility Provision
Today, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson became the first federal judge to find a provision of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. If you’re keeping a scorecard, it is now 2 to 1 in favor of the ACA. Two other federal judges have upheld the law. This certainly won’t be the last scrimmage before the…
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Congress Acts to Change ACA Subsidy Structure
By Joe Touschner We’re less than a year beyond the passage of the Affordable Care Act and still three full years from the implementation of state exchanges and their federal premium subsidies. But already Congress has decided to make some significant changes to how the premium tax credits would work and, in the process, could…
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New Transparency Standards Set for Mini-Meds
Yesterday, CCF’s guest blogger Aaron Smith of Young Invincibles wrote about some of the problems with so-called “mini-meds” or limited benefit plans. These are products that can’t even be called “insurance” because they provide so little protection to patients – some of them have limits on what they’ll cover as low as $2000 per year. Unfortunately, for millions…
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Young Adult’s Perspective on the Problem with Mini-Meds
Editor’s Note: Aaron Smith, co-founder of the Young Invincibles, brings a fresh perspective to the old issue of mini-med plans. He testified before a Senate Committee on this topic last week so we asked him to share his views with our readers. By Aaron Smith, co-founder of Young Invincibles There has been a great deal…
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States Can Reap Significant Savings By Implementing ACA
A new report by the Urban Institute and funded by First Focus finds that states could in fact, save significant dollars by successfully implementing health reform. This new report stands in stark contrast to other recent reports that states will bear significant costs to implement health reform. These potential cost-savings couldn’t be more welcome news…
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Health Delivery System Listening Session Coming to a Region Near You
HHS and the CMS Innovation Center want to hear from you on how to improve the health care delivery system. In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, they are hosting regional listening sessions. They kicked off the listening tour with Region Five (Chicago) on Monday and are headed to Regions Three (Philadelphia) and Ten (Seattle) later…
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GAO Finds Medicaid & CHIP Dental Care Slowly Improving
By Meg Booth and Colin Reusch, Children’s Dental Health Project It’s been almost four years since the tragedy of Deamonte Driver, a twelve-year-old Maryland boy who died due to complications of an untreated abscessed tooth. His death highlighted the worst case scenario for families struggling to find dental care. Those of you who know Children’s…
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Americans Want Health Care Reform to Go Forward
(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post and Step Forward blogs) By John Bouman, President, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law Some people are spinning hard about the outcome of the recent mid-term elections. They are trying to say that the changes in Congress were a “mandate” to repeal health care reform. As usual, most of those spinners…
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Keeping Up with Affordable Care Act Implementation: Health Reform GPS and NASHP’s State Reforum
By Joe Touschner The pace of activity from federal agencies since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March has been remarkable — it seems like there is a new grant announcement, request for comment, or regulation every week. And states are just getting started — soon we’ll see exchange planning and launch, consumer…
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HHS Announces Medical Loss Ratio Rule
By Joe Touschner Even with all the ink, airtime, and pixels used in debating and discussing the Affordable Care Act over the last year, many of its provisions–including some very important ones–remain obscure. HHS today put forward regulations implementing one of those seemingly obscure, but actually quite vital parts of the law. The new regulations…
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HHS Issues First Guidance on Exchanges
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown Health Policy Institute Yesterday, HHS issued the first guidance on exchanges, the “first in a series of documents” they plan to publish over the next three years to give states the information they need to establish exchanges. Though the department plans to issue regulations for public comment in 2011, the goal of this…
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Medicaid Managed Care – States Should Look Before They Leap (Again!)
By Joel Ferber, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and nationally recognized expert on Medicaid A recent article in USA Today focused on Medicaid managed care and its implications for health reform. Health insurance companies are clamoring for the substantial new business that will become available when Medicaid coverage is expanded to an estimated 16 million…
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NAIC Makes Progress on Model State Laws – Comments are Welcome
It’s been a busy few weeks for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as they move forward on implementing key provisions of the ACA. A summary of the latest activity – and ways you can get involved – are summarized below. 1. Exchanges. The NAIC’s subgroup on exchanges just reported out a model state law…
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Show Me the Mandate
Health reform was not a dominant factor in influencing voters’ decisions during the mid-term elections according to the recently released Kaiser health tracking poll. That may be surprising given what we’ve been hearing about the election being a mandate for repeal of the new law but it is consistent with other polls. The Kaiser poll…
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Waiver Watchers – We Need You More Than Ever
One of the consequences of the election, I believe, is that given the significant number of opponents of health care reform who were elected as Governors and/or Insurance Commissioners, we are going to see more “waiver” proposals. Even before the election, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was talking up the prospect of seeking legislation to allow…