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At the beginning of 2024, nine months into states’ efforts to unwind the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision and reverify enrollees’ eligibility, states have completed renewals for less than half of all enrollees.
With the start of the 2024 Affordable Care Act open enrollment, the Marketplaces have been operating for a full decade and are heading into their eleventh year. This policy watch outlines changes to watch out for during 2024 Open Enrollment.
As open enrollment begins for Marketplace plans, this Policy Watch provides information about consumer experiences with Marketplace sign up from the 2023 KFF Consumer Survey. Data from the survey show that Marketplace sign up has been a challenge to many consumers---often more complicated than enrollment in other kinds of health insurance. The Policy Watch also spotlights efforts to address common enrollment problems such as option overload and transitioning to Marketplace coverage from other forms of coverage.
For 2024, the average Medicare beneficiary has access to 43 Medicare Advantage plans and can choose from plans offered by 8 firms. Among the majority of Medicare Advantage plans that cover prescription drugs, 66 percent will charge no premium in addition to the monthly Medicare Part B premium. As in previous years, the vast majority of Medicare Advantage plans will offer supplemental benefits, including fitness, dental, vision, and hearing benefits.
With some states grappling over whether to expand Medicaid, and Congress facing big decisions about the future of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), this briefing reviewed the basics about both programs, and discuss current issues. Co-hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Alliance for Health Reform, KFF's Diane Rowland and Ed Howard of the Alliance moderated the discussion.
Three key private health insurance markets -- Medicare Advantage, the individual market and the fully-insured group market -- appear to be financially healthy and attractive to insurers. The private Medicare Advantage market generates significantly larger gross margins per person than the individual market or fully-insured market. The future of these markets has become a focus for policymakers amid the debate over Medicare for All.
This brief analyzes Medicaid enrollment and spending trends for FY 2019 and FY 2020 based on interviews and data provided by state Medicaid directors as part of the 19th annual survey of Medicaid directors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. States reported declines in Medicaid enrollment and modest growth in total Medicaid spending for state fiscal year (FY) 2019 and budgeted for nearly flat enrollment growth but a return to more typical rates of spending growth for FY 2020.
Recently there have been declines in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment, reversing a previous trend of increases following implementation of the ACA. Experiences in some states suggest that renewal process requirements and growing use of periodic eligibility checks may be contributing to disenrollment among people who are still eligible for coverage as well as increased churn in coverage. This brief reviews current rules and state processes related to renewal and periodic eligibility reviews and discusses potential process issues that may be contributing to Medicaid and CHIP enrollment declines.
Overall enrollment in the individual market fell 5% to 13.7 million in the first quarter of 2019 following the repeal of the ACA’s individual mandate penalty.
On Oct. 25, 2018, KFF released its 18th annual 50-state Medicaid budget survey for state fiscal years 2018 and 2019.
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