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This issue brief compares President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden on their records, actions and proposals related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes a general overview of their respective approaches, followed by a detailed side-by-side.
This issue brief answers key questions about California v. Texas (known as Texas v. US in the lower courts), the case challenging the Affordable Care Act to be heard by the Supreme Court.
This brief examines where the candidates stand on four key aspects of the nation’s mental health and substance abuse challenges: the opioid epidemic, suicide rates, mental health parity, and mental health workforce. On each issue, the brief summarizes the policy positions of President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Individual market insurers, on average, remained profitable through the first three months of 2020 as claims costs rose only slightly compared to the same period last year. It is likely that the most significant impacts of the coronavirus on the individual market will not be evident nationally until second or third quarter data are released.
New data from 2019 suggest that insurers in the individual market remain profitable, even with average premiums falling for the first time since the ACA was implemented. These data indicate that the individual market appears to be stable in 2019, despite the repeal of the individual mandate penalty and the proliferation of loosely-regulated short-term insurance plans.
While to date big cities and major urban areas have seen the greatest number of coronavirus cases and deaths, this analysis finds the growth rate is now higher in rural areas.
With unemployment claims rising amid the COVID-19 crisis, this post examines options for people who lose job-based coverage and steps policymakers could take to smooth their transitions.
New federal legislation will require most private health plans to cover testing for the coronavirus with no cost sharing. Some states have adopted similar requirements for insurers they regulate, and many private insurance companies will voluntarily expand coverage for testing. However, some private coverage will not be subject to these requirements. To date, fewer changes have been adopted or considered with respect to treatment for complications from the disease. This brief reviews current coverage standards for private health plans and how these may change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This analysis looks at how many of the remaining uninsured are eligible for premium subsidies that are large enough to cover the entire cost of a bronze plan, which is the minimum level of coverage available on the Marketplaces. It estimates 28% of uninsured individuals who could shop on the ACA Marketplace, or 4.7 million people nationwide, are eligible to purchase a bronze plan with $0 premiums after subsidies in 2020.
This analysis estimates that almost 54 million people – or 27% of all adults under 65 —have pre-existing health conditions that would likely have made them uninsurable in the individual markets that existed in most states before the Affordable Care Act. Almost half (45%) of non-elderly families include at least one adult with such a pre-existing condition. The analysis also includes estimates by age, state and gender.
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