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The Affordable Care Act's second annual open enrollment period starts Nov. 15 and runs until Feb. 15 -- a three-month window for Americans to shop for and purchase new health coverage, or change their plan through Healthcare.gov or their state-run insurance marketplace.
In the latest post from the series Policy Insights, Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman discusses the need for community based outreach to enroll the long term uninsured. All previous Policy Insights posts are archived online.
This Health Policy 101 chapter provides an overview of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a major reform of the U.S. health care system aimed at reducing high uninsured rates and alleviating issues like high out-of-pocket costs and coverage exclusions for preexisting conditions. The ACA significantly altered many aspects of the health system and the chapter explores its mechanisms, such as the Health Insurance Marketplaces, and the evolution of the law since its passage in 2010 to the changes in the 2025 budget reconciliation law.
This brief analyzes Medicaid enrollment and spending trends for FY 2025 and FY 2026, based on data provided by state Medicaid directors as part of the 25th annual survey of Medicaid directors.
In its third year, the survey tracks the experiences of assistance programs signing people up for Affordable Care Act coverage during open enrollment and, for consumers who qualify, during special enrollment periods. This year, for the second time, the survey includes health insurance brokers who helped people apply for non-group coverage in an ACA marketplace.
Based on case studies and focus groups, this brief reviews experiences with Medicaid and Marketplace enrollment, renewal, and consumer assistance in Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, and Washington as of Spring 2016. These states implemented the Medicaid expansion and established a state-based Marketplace (SBM) in 2014. This brief builds on previous reports that examined states’ preparation for implementation prior to the initial ACA open enrollment period and their experiences after completion of the first and second open enrollment periods.
The Kaiser Family Foundation California Longitudinal Panel Survey is a series of surveys that, over time, tracked the experiences and views of a representative, randomly selected sample of Californians who were uninsured prior to the major coverage expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The initial baseline survey was conducted with a representative sample of 2,001 nonelderly uninsured Californian adults in summer 2013, prior to the ACA’s initial open enrollment period. After each enrollment period concluded, a survey was conducted of the same group of previously uninsured Californians who participated in the baseline (a longitudinal panel survey). The fourth and final survey in the series, and the focus of this report, followed up with them after the third open enrollment period in spring 2016 to find out whether more have gained coverage, lost coverage, or remained uninsured, what barriers to coverage remain, how those who now have insurance view their coverage, and to assess the impacts that gaining health insurance may have had on financial security and access to care.
This data note discusses the details and timing of some of the private and federal surveys that will be used to look at how coverage has changed due to the Affordable Care Act. Different surveys offer different information and insight into coverage under the ACA, and we discuss the contributions and challenges in each type of effort.
Despite the news that 8 million people have signed up for health insurance through the ACA’s new marketplaces, the April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds no change in overall opinion of the law since last month . The most common reason for remaining uninsured is not being able to find an affordable plan. Also, a majority of the public supports the ACA’s requirement that private health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control and believes that for-profit companies should be subject to this requirement even if their owners object to birth control on religious grounds.
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