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This analysis offers a window into how insurers could respond if the Affordable Care Act's essential health benefits requirement is rolled back, a change being considered by Congressional leaders and allowed through state waivers by the House-passed American Health Care Act as a potential way for lowering premiums.
As Congress presses forward with efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a new interactive map from the Kaiser Family Foundation provides a window into the changes in health insurance coverage and financing in each state under the 7-year-old law. The ACA increased enrollment in health insurance by expanding Medicaid, offering tax credits to low- and middle-income marketplace enrollees and reforming insurance market rules concerning coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions. Map…
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 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.
In an Axios column, Drew Altman analyzes the narrowing gap between growth in health spending and GDP and discusses why it matters. The big question, he says, is will the narrowing have staying power?
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…
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.
About two-thirds (65%) of voters say a candidate’s support for continued protections for people with pre-existing health conditions is either the “single most important factor” or “very important” to their vote in the upcoming midterms elections, finds the latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll. That’s a larger share than says the same about other health care issues, including bringing down prescription drug costs (58%), repealing the Affordable Care Act (53%), stabilizing the ACA marketplaces (52%), or…
A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis maps rates of pre-existing conditions across 129 metropolitan and micropolitan areas in the U.S., finding that even within the same state, the prevalence of such conditions can vary substantially. For example, 34 percent of residents of Florence, South Carolina have a pre-existing condition, but further south in Charleston and Hilton Head, the rate is 24 percent. The share of non-elderly adults with a pre-existing condition ranges from 41 percent…
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