Pre-Existing Conditions

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.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of short-term, limited duration health plans for sale through two major national online brokers finds big gaps in the benefits they offer. Through an executive order and proposed new regulations, the Trump Administration is seeking to encourage broader use of short-term, limited duration health…

Given the Trump Administration’s promotion of short-term limited-duration (STLD) health insurance policies, this brief examines what they mean for people with HIV. The analysis assesses whether people with HIV could enroll in STLD plans by applying to 38 plans across five states and getting in each case. It also assesses whether such plans could meet basic HIV care and treatment needs for someone diagnosed once enrolled. This finding takes on new importance in light of the Administration’s decision not to defend the ACA and to argue for eliminating pre-existing condition protections.

In this June 2018 post for The JAMA Forum, Larry Levitt examines the potential impact of the Trump Administration’s legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

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.

Facing a challenge now before the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) included provisions to protect people with pre-existing conditions from discrimination in the individual employment market. This post explains what pre-existing conditions are and the different estimates for the number of people who have them.

In this perspective published by the Washington Post, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy Larry Levitt explains why the popular Affordable Care Act provisions that ensure people with pre-existing conditions can access affordable health insurance can’t easily be preserved if other related provisions are overturned.

KFF’s Larry Levitt discusses waning awareness of the Affordable Care Act’s provisions protecting people with pre-existing conditions and examines the Republican Study Committee’s budget proposal, which proposes to repeal the provisions.

“AIDS at 30: The U.S. Epidemic” chronicles the thirty years since the first cases of a rare pneumonia found in young gay men were reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. This four minute video highlights landmarks in the history of AIDS from the discovery of the AIDS virus and…