Subsidies

This short summary describes the health coverage provisions contained in the final version of the Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010, including the individual mandate requirements, expansion of public programs, health insurance exchanges, changes to private insurance and employer requirements.

This brief provides an overview of the financial assistance provided under the ACA for people purchasing coverage on their own through health insurance Marketplaces (also called exchanges).

The major coverage provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) go into effect in January 2014 with an expansion of Medicaid eligibility to nearly all individuals under 138% of poverty and new subsidies for individuals with incomes between 138% and 400% of poverty to purchase coverage in newly established Health…

With the nation’s unemployment rate rising to its highest levels in decades as a result of the recession, many families have lost their employer-sponsored health coverage or are at risk of doing so. In an effort to help people maintain coverage after a layoff, the stimulus legislation known as the…

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) establishes four levels of coverage based on the concept of “actuarial value,” which represents the share of health care expenses the plan covers for a typical group of enrollees. As plans increase in actuarial value – bronze, silver, gold, and platinum –…

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services such as colonoscopies without any patient cost-sharing. This report finds that confusion over whether colon cancer screenings are preventive care or treatment means patients sometimes receive unexpected bills for the procedure. The report examines cost-sharing practices for colorectal screenings through interviews with experts and officials in the medical and insurance industries.

This report was co-authored by The Kaiser Family Foundation, American Cancer Society, and National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable.

I usually don’t make predictions, unless they are backed up by the kind of statistical modeling we often produce.  But here are three predictions I am confident about that form the basis of this latest column. GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS WILL CONTINUE TO RISE AT HISTORICALLY MODERATE LEVELS, AT LEAST…

Conservatives obviously don’t like what they call “Obamacare” because they think it expands the role of government too much and spends too much money.  But ironically, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) actually promotes — though not explicitly — something that has been a fundamental objective of conservatives in health care…

The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured convened a roundtable discussion on August 31, 2010 with a group of national and state experts to discuss key issues related to coordinating coverage and care in Medicaid and the new Health Insurance Exchanges under health reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable…

About 5 million people could benefit from the fix to the Affordable Care Act’s “family glitch” that allows workers offered unaffordable family coverage to get subsidies in the marketplace – if they can show they qualify. This brief looks at some of the challenges consumers may face in deciding whether to take advantage of the fix.