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  • Health Care Costs: What You Need To Know

    Event Date:
    Event

    On Wednesday, April 1, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Alliance for Health Reform presented a briefing to explore the trends in health care costs in both the public and private sectors.

  • How the Loss of Cost-Sharing Subsidy Payments is Affecting 2018 Premiums

    Issue Brief

    This analysis of 32 states and Washington, D.C., tracks data on 2018 Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace premium increases that insurers directly attributed to the end of cost-sharing reduction payments, which reimburse insurers for providing marketplace health plans with reduced out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people. Following months of uncertainty, the Trump administration announced on Oct. 12 that the payments would be discontinued immediately, although insurers must still offer the subsidized coverage.

  • How Premiums Are Changing In 2018

    Issue Brief

    Maps illustrate how premiums in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces changed for 2018 by looking at the change in the lowest-cost bronze, silver and gold plans by county; counties where an individual’s tax credit covers the full premium of the lowest-cost bronze plan; and counties where the unsubsidized premium for the lowest-cost gold plan has a lower or comparable premium to the lowest-cost silver plan in 2018.

  • Digging Into the Data: What Can We Learn from the State Evaluation of Healthy Indiana (HIP 2.0) Premiums

    Issue Brief

    Indiana initially implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion through a Section 1115 waiver in February 2015. Indiana’s waiver included important changes from federal law regarding enrollment and premiums. The initial waiver expired, and Indiana received approval for a waiver extension in February, 2018 which continues most components of HIP 2.0 and adds some new provisions related to enrollment and premiums. This brief looks at available data from the state’s evaluation of premiums prepared by The Lewin…

  • Revisiting ‘Skin in the Game’ Among Medicare Beneficiaries: An Updated Analysis of the Increasing Financial Burden of Health Care Spending From 1997 to 2005

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief presents an analysis of the financial burden of out-of-pocket health care spending for Medicare beneficiaries between 1997 and 2005. The analysis shows median out-of-pocket spending as a share of Medicare beneficiaries' income increased between 1997 and 2005, from 11.9 percent to 16.1 percent. For some beneficiaries, the spending burden was even greater, with 25 percent of people on Medicare spending nearly one-third or more of their income on health care.

  • Medicare Part D in 2016 and Trends over Time

    Report

    This chartpack presents a summary of Part D enrollment, premiums, cost sharing, benefit design and other key trends in 2016 and changes over time. For 2016, the analysis finds that 40% of Part D enrollees are now in Medicare Advantage drug plans, and over half of all enrollees are in plans offered by just three firms. The chartpack also highlights some concerning trends in the Low-Income Subsidy market, with the fewest number of premium-free plans…

  • Turning the Spotlight on Medicare Advantage for 2017

    News Release

    Medicare Advantage plans, which consist primarily of HMOs and PPOs, now cover almost 18 million people – nearly one-third of all Medicare beneficiaries.  Medicare Advantage plans have been in the news lately because the proposed merger between Aetna and Humana, which together account for one-quarter of all Medicare Advantage enrollees, could further consolidate the Medicare Advantage market. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, featuring the latest publicly available data on the 2017 Medicare marketplace, examines new…

  • Grandfathering Explained

    Perspective

    The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives recently indicated that it will be seeking to repeal regulations under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that govern the “grandfathered” status of health plans. As this aspect of the health reform law gets more scrutiny, it may be useful to review some of the specifics of how grandfathering works. The purpose of grandfathering: As provisions of the ACA go into effect, grandfathering provides for a smoother transition by…

  • Measuring the Affordability of Employer Health Coverage

    Perspective

    A recent draft regulation issued by the Treasury Department describes who is eligible for premium tax credits to help them afford coverage offered through health insurance exchanges beginning in 2014. Tax credits will be available to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level who are not eligible for public coverage such as Medicaid or Medicare and who are not offered affordable health coverage by an employer. The approach that the…

  • Insurance Brokers and the Medical Loss Ratio

    Perspective

    In a close vote, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) recently adopted a resolution urging Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to exempt insurance broker and agent compensation from medical loss ratio (MLR) requirements or otherwise adjust the requirements to ease their effect. HHS last week released its final MLR rule, maintaining its original decision to count broker compensation as an administrative cost for insurers. H.R. 1206, a bill that…