Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
As reported in NPR: A federal judge in Texas issued a ruling Friday declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, apparently setting the stage for another hearing on the health care law by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor invalidates what’s commonly referred to as Obamacare nationwide, and casts into…
A number of states have re-insurance programs to support the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare) marketplaces in the individual and small group markets. Re-insurance occurs when the state offers to pay a percentage of patient costs if they exceed some threshold. This may lead you to ask a number of reasonable questions. For instance: Why…
From Sen and DeLeire (2018): …premiums of Marketplace plans are 11% lower in Medicaid expansion states, controlling for demographic and health characteristics as well as measures of health care access. These results are consistent with evidence on the composition of the private insurance risk pool in expansion versus nonexpansion states and associated differences in expected…
Between 2017 and 2018, premiums Obamacare health insurance plans plans rose by 32%. To be more specific, the Urban Institute reports that: The national average increase was 32.0 percent for the lowest-priced silver plans and 19.1 percent for gold plans, but the increases varied by states…State changes in average lowest-priced silver premiums ranged from a 22.5…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to increase health insurance coverage largely through two pathways: (i) raising the income limits for individuals to qualify for Medicaid, (ii) creating new health insurance exchanges and health insurance subsidies to encourage the purchase of private health insurance among individuals that were not eligible for Medicaid. Other provisions, such…
Much of the news has claimed that the Affordable Care Act is a failure because individuals in many counties have few or even no health insurance options. However, how many counties truly will have zero Obamacare exchange insurance options in 2018 ? The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that there are only 17 counties covering 9,595…
The Senate’s new health care bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, proposes a number of changes to the Affordable Care Act. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a detailed breakdown of the bill and compares it with the Affordable Care Act that President Obama passed and the American Health Care Act that was proposed…
One of the primary changes in the healthcare system directed by the Affordable Care Act was providing funding for states to expand Medicaid. Many states did so; many others did not. Some states expanded Medicaid but put additional hurdles in front of beneficiaries to receive this coverage at no cost. Consider the case of the State of Iowa.…
An interesting paper by Graves and Nikpay (2017) look at the evoluation of the health insurance market before and after Obamacare. The authors find We found that the ACA’s unprecedented coverage changes increased transitions to Medicaid and nongroup coverage among the uninsured, while strengthening the existing employer-sponsored insurance system and improving retention of public coverage.…
Check out my interview on NPR with Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson about what recent changes in health insurance premiums changes mean for the future of the Affordable Care Act.