Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Why did state-based health insurance exchanges (HIEs) enroll more people than those that were federally run? One reason of course is the problems with healthcare.gov. However, there may be other reasons as well. A RWJF report finds the following. This analysis reveals extreme differences in the amount of funding available to states to help consumers…
The Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act was legal with one exception: the federal government could not require states to increase Medicaid eligibility. Although States were not required to make Medicaid eligibility more generous, the did have an incentive to do so. The federal government will pay 90% of the cost of enrolling…
How many people will sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare)? There are a number of different projections. WonkBlog reports: The big political focus has been on whether exchange enrollment by March 31 will reach 6 million, the revised estimate provided by the Congressional Budget Office. After the Department of Health…
California Healthline reports that At least one million fewer people than previously expected are projected to obtain health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges this year, primarily because of the troubled rollout of the federal health insurance exchange website last fall, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s new annual budget outlook report. WonkBlog has a…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains a provision, known as the individual mandate, which requires all individuals to have health insurance. Like most rules, however, there are loopholes. The most recent loopholes, however, were enacted by the Obama administration due to the problems with the Healthcare.gov website. Robert Laszewski explains: If you had a health…
One lesser known provision of the Affordable Care Act is that it regulates insurers medical loss ratios (MLRs). What are MLRs? Does this matter? A research paper by Karaca-Mandic, Abraham and Simon (2013) examines the question. They explain the ACA’s MLR requirement as follows. One provision that has gained considerable attention is the establishment of…
As describe in this recent Health Affairs article, as of 2011, your likelihood of being offered health insurance looked like this: Courtesy of Health Affairs. How will the ACA affect the share of individuals who receive coverage (and what type of insurance coverage they receive). This table describes some of the consequences. Courtesy…
Health reform has expanded Medicaid access to millions of Americans. The question is, will the poor even want Medicaid insurance? As finances are tightening, many states are attempting to reduce the generosity of their current Medicaid benefits. In California, (where Medicaid is known as Medi-Cal), Governor Jerry Brown wants to reduce Medicaid’s benefit generosity. He…
Today the Supreme Court upheld the large majority of Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., Health Reform, ObamaCare, ACA) including the individual mandate. Why was the individual mandate allowed to remain in the law? According to Justice Ginsburg and others, it is a form of a tax. “Justice Ginsburg makes clear that the vote is 5-4 on…
The answer depends on the state. Today, I examine an Urban Institute research paper that looks at this progress in more detail. Dividing States into 3 Group The most advance States fall into Group 1 (CA, CO, CT, DC, HI, IN, MA, MD, NV, OR, RI, UT, VT, WA, WV). These states have either enacted…