Marketplace
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Risky Business: Health Actuaries Assess the Individual Market and Rates
By Rachel Schwab, originally posted on CHIRblog Health reform is often a series of what-ifs. As we wade into the uncertainty of congressional action, Executive Orders, and “the greatest replacement plan ever,” consumers and insurers alike have to hedge their bets and carefully calculate the impact of a number of unknown outcomes. Unfortunately sometimes it…
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Uncertain Future for the Affordable Care Act Leads Insurers to Rethink Participation, Prices
By Sabrina Corlette, Kevin Lucia, Justin Giovannelli and Dania Palanker, originally posted on CHIRblog The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is facing an uncertain future, with a new President and Congress committed to its repeal. Upcoming policy debates could have a dramatic impact on the individual health insurance market, especially the ACA’s marketplaces. While millions of…
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Prior to the ACA, Where You Lived Determined How Accessible and Affordable Coverage Would Be
By Sandy Ahn, originally posted on CHIRblog Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), what state you lived in determined how easily you could purchase a health plan, the price, and what the plan would cover in the individual market. Rules varied by state, but one common fact was that insurers could use your health status…
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Complicated Cassidy-Collins Plan to Replace ACA Falls Short
With pressure building around repealing the ACA without a replacement plan, various “replacement” plans are starting to pop up – most recently this bill from Senators Cassidy and Collins. Sarah Lueck at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities posted a thoughtful analysis of the bill’s key provisions and Timothy Jost offers even more details…
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Senators’ ACA Replacement Won’t Likely Give States, Patients the Choices They Seek
By Sarah Lueck, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senators Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins say their new proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would allow people who like the coverage they have to keep it. But now that we have more details about the proposal, it’s hard to see how that could…
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What Does President Trump’s Executive Order Mean for the Affordable Care Act?
As you may have heard, President Trump issued an executive order about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on his inauguration day, but what’s been less clear is what exactly it means. Can the President repeal the ACA by executive order? The short answer is no. The ACA became law when it was passed by Congress…
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What Does Senate Passage of the Budget Mean for Children and Families?
Early this morning the Senate passed its fiscal year 2017 budget, with a vote of 51-48. The budget now heads to the House for consideration and a vote, which is expected tomorrow. But what does the budget say, and more importantly, what does it mean for children and families? The budget establishes funding levels for…
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ACA Repeal Would Lavish Medicare Tax Cuts on 400 Highest-Income Households
By Brandon Debot, Chye-Ching Huang, and Chuck Marr, originally posted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Republicans’ planned bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is expected to be similar to the repeal bill that President Obama vetoed in January 2016, would provide an immediate windfall tax cut to the highest-income Americans…
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Kaiser Family Foundation & CCF Release 50-State Medicaid/CHIP Survey
Today, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families released their annual 50-state survey on Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, renewal and cost-sharing policies. The survey is a “must read” report for anyone interested in health care policy and its impact on low-income children and families across the country. Tricia…
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Medicaid and CHIP Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost Sharing Policies: Findings from a 50-State Survey
This annual 50-state survey provides data on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) eligibility, enrollment, renewal and cost sharing policies and identifies changes in these policies that occurred in the past year. This report documents the role Medicaid and CHIP play for low-income children and families and the evolution of these programs under the…
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Research Shows Fewer Jobs, Greater Financial Burden on Providers, States, & Local Governments if ACA Repealed
Taken together, three recent papers provide a sobering look at the extensive economic consequences for providers if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is repealed. Just last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published “The Impact on Health Care Providers of Partial ACA Repeal through Reconciliation,” an analysis from the Urban Institute. Their main finding? Repeal…
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Busting the “Falling under its Own Weight” Myth: New Analysis Shows Better Outlook for the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces
By Rachel Schwab, originally posted on CHIRblog It’s a new year, and with it comes new hope for the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) exchanges. Wall Street analysts recently released research that shows improvements in insurers’ finances for 2016, predicting even better margins for future years. But just as the markets are starting to stabilize, the…
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For Mental Health Services, Would ACA Repeal Turn ‘Warm Handoff’ into Cold Shoulder?
One of the few points of bipartisan agreement in Congress last year was finding ways to support mental health services. The 21st Century Cures Act passed in Congress and signed by the President just last month took steps to integrate mental health into primary care services, expand the pool of providers and improve the interactions…
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The ACA Transformed Medicaid Enrollment Processes. Rolling Them Back Would Wreak Havoc.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, is most widely known for strengthening consumer protections in private insurance and creating new pathways to affordable coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplaces and Medicaid. Less familiar is another aspect of the law—the ACA’s Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) rules and systems—that sought to align eligibility among the…
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Loss of Cost-Sharing Reductions in ACA Marketplace: Impact on Consumers and Insurer Participation
While there has been considerable discussion of the new Congress’s plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is another, potentially more immediate, threat to millions of Americans that could materialize without legislative action. Under the ACA, insurers must reduce the cost-sharing obligations of low-income enrollees, such as their copayments and deductibles.…
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Latino Child Health Coverage Rate Reaches Record High, But Threats Loom
Originally posted by NCLR Latino children with health coverage reached a record high 92.5 percent in 2015, the second year after key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect, according to our new joint report with the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. These gains are part of overall coverage gains for…
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Latino Children’s Coverage Reaches Historic High, But Too Many Remain Uninsured
Recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau examining health insurance coverage rates in 2015 found that, during the 2013-2015 period, the U.S. experienced the largest two-year decline in uninsurance rates for all children on record. The uninsurance rate for all children declined from 7.1 percent in 2013 to 4.8 percent in 2015. During the…
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Covering Parents and Caregivers Helps Kids – Many Gained Health Coverage Through the ACA
While we focus a lot on the critical importance of health coverage for children, we are equally mindful of the importance of parent coverage and its impacts on children. Say Ahhh! readers well know some of the important ways in which covering parents helps kids. Providing coverage to parents rolls out a welcome mat—meaning more…
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Healthy Parents and Caregivers are Essential to Children’s Healthy Development
Since 2014, millions of parents and other adults have been able to access health insurance for the first time either through the Medicaid expansion (10 million) or the new marketplaces (11.5 million) created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The rate of uninsured adults under age 65 declined significantly in 2014, the first year of…
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Arizona’s Coverage for Children and Families is Especially Threatened by ACA Repeal with No Replace
Congressional leaders have been clear that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is first up on their agenda in January. I blogged about this the other day, and as I was reflecting on these issues, I realized that children and families in Arizona are in particularly hot water if the ACA is repealed.…
