Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This policy brief provides the answer. One interesting finding is how the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate may put a bind on poor, legal immigrants. “Legal immigrants with less than five years of legal permanent residency will face the same requirement as native born U.S. citizens to have health insurance coverage. However, legal immigrants…
Stephen Zuckerman has a nice summary of the key provisions in the Health Reform law (i.e., PPACA). There are six broad changes: i) the creation of health insurance exchanges, ii) an excise tax on high-cost health plans, iii) creating the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), iv) Medicare policy changes v) additional emphasis on prevention and…
How will health reform affect small, medium and large size businesses? Linda Blumberg answers this question in this RWJ policy brief. Blumberg summarizes the legislation as follows: “Small employers, those with fewer than 50 workers, will face no new requirements but will have new insurance options made available to them through the new health insurance…
How will health reform affect state health care costs? Will reform bankrupt states as some Republicans say? Or will costs be negligible, as Democrats claims? According to a study by Holahan and Dorn (2010) the answer is somewhere in the middle. Most of the additional costs will come from expanding Medicaid to newly eligible population,…
Health Reform, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), drastically altered the health care landscape. Congress included health exchanges, and individual mandate, and a number of other reforms into the bill. Today, I focus on how Health Reform will affect existing programs which care for the nations poor. In particular, CHIP…
Kolstad and Kowalski (2010) examine how the Massachusetts individual mandate affected uninsurance rates, hospital and outpatient utilization, and preventive care: “Among the population discharged from the hospital in Massachusetts, the reform decreased uninsurance by 28% relative to its initial level. Increased coverage affected utilization patterns by decreasing length of stay and the number of inpatient…
How can we improve health care? The California Task Force on Affordable Care gives its top 10 recommendations in this report. The report’s slogan is “ten ways Californians can save over $300 billion.” These recommendations include: Implement bundled payments Hold hospitals accountable for progress in reducing utilization in targeted areas such as imaging Directly act…
With healthcare reform having passed, how will the health insurance market look a few years from now? Although Mitt Romney may (or may not) deny it, Massachusetts has been a model for President Obama’s health reform bill. In 2006, Massachusetts passed its own health reform and when the share of uninsured residents was at 14%. …
One of the first steps after the passage of health reform is the creation of a high risk pool for uninsured individuals. This is help individuals such as 56 year old Laura Carpenter of Tuolumne, CA. Individuals such as With the $5 billion allocated for this task, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius…
One aspect of health reform that has received little attention is passage of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports(CLASS) Act. This act creates a long-term care (LTC) insurance program. However, the insurance plan in its current form is fairly limited. Those who require assistance with activities such as bathing, dressing, getting out of bed…