Coverage

Recent policy actions and proposals in Medicaid have renewed focus on the problem of churn, or temporary loss of coverage in which enrollees disenroll and then re-enroll within a short period of time. We find that 10% of full-benefit enrollees have a gap in coverage of less than a year, and rates are higher for children and adults compared to aged and people with disabilities. Churn has implications for access to care as well as administrative costs faced by states.

The release of the Census Bureau’s annual health insurance estimates for 2019 highlighted the challenges posed by the lag in data on insurance coverage given the unprecedented social and economic changes that have occurred since the 2019 data were collected. This post discusses trends in insurance coverage leading up to the start of the pandemic and what we know about more recent changes in coverage.

Few issues are likely to matter as much to voters in November’s presidential election as President Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis, which have left almost 200,000 Americans dead and prompted job layoffs and furloughs affecting tens of millions of Americans. A new election brief compares…

Surprisingly, in comparison to the nearly 9% drop in employment from March to June, early data suggests that employers had kept coverage rates remarkably steady, at least through mid-summer. We find that enrollment in the fully-insured group market dropped by just 1.3% from the end of March through the end of June.

This issue brief compares President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden on their records, actions and proposals related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes a general overview of their respective approaches, followed by a detailed side-by-side.

There has been a proliferation of online services in recent years that seek to offer individuals that cannot make it to a clinic or do not have an established source of care access to some contraceptive methods and STI testing through a telemedicine platform, usually a website or a smartphone application. This data note provides an overview of options available for the online management of sexual and reproductive health services during the coronavirus pandemic and discusses the opportunities and limitations of these platforms in terms of availability and cost.

As more coronavirus cases and deaths are confirmed in jails and prisons, states can utilize programs and other policy actions to mitigate the risk and spread of the disease within facilities and the broader communities in which they are located, according to a new issue brief from KFF. More than…

Addressing health care needs of people moving into and out of the criminal justice system and staff who work them is an important component of coronavirus response efforts and protecting and promoting public health within the communities in which correctional facilities are located. This brief provides data on spread of coronavirus within correctional facilities, discusses the health risks for the justice-involved population and the staff who work with them, identifies the role Medicaid can play in response efforts for justice-involved individuals, and highlights other steps correctional systems can take to mitigate risk of coronavirus for the justice-involved population and promote public health.

Most Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans that have waived cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment, and many other beneficiaries in traditional Medicare have their cost sharing covered by supplemental insurance. This blog post discusses the 6 million Medicare beneficiaries without supplemental coverage who would face out-of-pocket costs if they require treatment for COVID-19.

The COVID-19 outbreak will likely disproportionately affect communities of color in both their health and their pocketbooks, compounding longstanding racial disparities in health and economic conditions, according to a new KFF analysis. While comprehensive data about how the COVID-19 crisis is unfolding are not yet available, early data from some…