Key Issues to Consider for Outreach and Enrollment Efforts under Health Reform February 1, 2012 Issue Brief The Affordable Care Act will significantly expand health coverage opportunities through an expansion in Medicaid and the creation of new health insurance exchanges in 2014. Effective outreach and enrollment efforts will be vital for assuring the expansions translate into increased coverage. Based on a discussion with federal and state officials…
A Guide to the Supreme Court’s Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law January 30, 2012 Issue Brief With the Supreme Court preparing to hear oral arguments about challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act in March 2012, this Kaiser Family Foundation brief serves as a primer on the pending case, which challenges the constitutionality both of the law’s individual mandate that requires most Americans to obtain health…
Kaiser November Health Tracking Poll: Individual Elements of the ACA Popular with the Public November 29, 2011 Perspective After taking a negative turn in October, the public’s overall views on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) returned to a more mixed status this month. Still, Americans remain somewhat more likely to have an unfavorable view of the law (44 percent) than a favorable one (37 percent).…
August Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: The Uninsured and the Health Reform Law August 29, 2011 Perspective The August Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that even though 32 million uninsured Americans will gain health insurance under the ACA, only about half of non-elderly Americans currently without coverage say they are familiar with the chief components in the law designed to achieve this goal. Fifty-two percent of the uninsured…
The Budget Trigger and Health Reform August 4, 2011 Perspective No doubt it will take some time to sort out how elements of the debt deal (formally “The Budget Control Act of 2011”) will all work. Delving into the details of how it affects subsidies in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to make insurance more affordable helps to illustrate how…
An Employer Health Benefits Balance Sheet June 17, 2011 Perspective There seems to be growing interest in the question of how many employers will keep offering coverage to their full-time employees once the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is fully implemented in 2014, or instead will choose to stop offering coverage and pay a penalty. While there is some good analysis…
Who Will be the H&R Block and TurboTax for Health Insurance? June 3, 2011 Perspective There’s been quite a bit of focus lately insofar as these issues go, anyway on health insurance agents and brokers (sometimes known in the industry as “producers”). They are pushing legislation that has been introduced in Congress and is now being studied by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that…
Pulling It Together: Predictions May 20, 2011 Perspective 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…
Pulling It Together: What Conservatives Won In Health Reform (And Don’t Seem to Know It) April 13, 2011 Perspective 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…
What the Actuarial Values in the Affordable Care Act Mean April 1, 2011 Issue Brief 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 –…