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In a column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why Senator Mark Pryor’s new campaign ad features the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, the somewhat forgotten “mega provision” of the law.
Almost Half of Non-Elderly Families have At Least One Adult with a Pre-Existing Condition An updated KFF 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. The share of adults under 65 with such declinable pre-existing conditions varies significantly across states, from at least…
The latest KFF Health Tracking Poll probes Democrats’ views about the general approaches to expanding health coverage and lowering costs put forward by the candidates. Most Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (55%) say they prefer a candidate who would build on the Affordable Care Act to achieve those goals. Fewer (40%) prefer a candidate who would replace the ACA with a Medicare-for-all plan. Even among those who prefer a candidate who would replace the ACA with…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced significant changes to the premiums charged in the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), aka the "high risk pool" created by the Affordable Care Act. Premiums will now be up to 40% lower depending on the state (in some states the cost to enrollees is unchanged), and application procedures will be eased. The PCIP plans provide coverage for people who cannot buy coverage in the…
Time Magazine's recent cover story on health care – "Bitter Pill" by Steven Brill – has focused attention on hospital prices, especially for people paying out of their own pockets. This is not a new issue, but certainly one that deserves attention. However, what has been lost in the ensuing commentary on high hospital prices is that Brill’s article is as much about inadequate insurance, which is the reason why the patients he writes about…
Though Congress last year failed to repeal key Affordable Care Act requirements for non-group health insurance that people buy themselves, the Trump Administration and some states are promoting other types of plans through regulatory changes that would allow the sale of products that skirt many of the ACA’s requirements. A new Kaiser Family Foundation brief examines four of those options and the tradeoffs involved if such loosely regulated markets take root as an alternative to…
In this Washington Post op-ed column, Karen Pollitz examines how the Trump Administration's efforts to promote coverage through short-term health insurance policies, rather than Affordable Care Act coverage, creates trade offs for consumers.
In 2018, three Medicare Part D plan sponsors—UnitedHealth, Humana, and CVS Health—account for more than half of the program’s 43 million Part D enrollees (55%) and two-thirds of all stand-alone drug plan enrollees, indicating a marketplace that is dominated by a handful of major insurers, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of Part D enrollment, premiums and cost-sharing data. The proposed mergers of CVS Health and Aetna, and Cigna and Express Scripts would…
In late 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take steps to expand the availability of short-term health insurance policies. This brief provides background information on short-term policies and how they differ from ACA-compliant health plans. It also analyzes the short-term plans available through two major online brokers to assess how often they include coverage for mental health, substance abuse, prescription drugs and maternity care.
The American Health Care Act (AHCA), which has passed the House of Representatives, contains a controversial provision that would allow states to waive community rating in the individual insurance market. In this brief we estimate the number of people with pre-existing conditions who might be affected by such a policy.
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