Private Insurance

In this animated video, the YouToons get ready for Obamacare and explore health insurance changes under the Affordable Care Act. This cartoon serves as a health reform tutorial for consumers and organizations.

This testimony by the Foundation’s Karen Pollitz before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission included background on wellness programs, wellness incentives and nondiscrimination since 1996, and questions and issues related to proposed regulations governing the design and application of wellness programs offered in conjunction with employer-sponsored group health plans.

Most (53%) adults with health care debt say they have received a medical or dental bill they thought contained an error at some point in the past 5 years, and most say a state consumer assistance program would be helpful to them.

This brief discusses federal mental health parity protections — what they are, who they apply to, who enforces them and key policy issues as Congress and federal agencies evaluate improvements to the law to address gaps in mental health coverage and access.

In this JAMA Forum column, KFF’s Larry Levitt examines the growing role of private insurance companies in public programs, including Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care, and the tradeoffs that result.

This Policy Watch gives an overview of employers offering to cover travel expenses for workers who need to go out of state for an abortion in the context of increasing restrictions on abortion around the country. We discuss who is offering these benefits, the implications for workers, and some of the legal and political concerns for employers.

This analysis of HealthCare.gov Marketplace insurers’ transparency data finds that 17% of in-network claims were denied in 2021, with denial rates varying widely across insurers. Consumers appealed less than two-tenths of 1% of denied in-network claims.

This post explains what’s known about how insurers use prior authorization as a tool to control costs and encourage cost-effective care, the state and federal laws that govern it, and ongoing policy debates over efforts to impose standards to limit or regulate its use.

A new federal law provides new consumer protections against “surprise” medical bills beginning this year. Test your knowledge about its provisions with this 12-question quiz.

Health plan networks affect patient access to care. This brief reviews options for setting and enforcing network adequacy standards and tools for making differences in plan networks more transparent.