High Risk Pools

For more than 35 years, many states operated high-risk pool programs to offer non-group health coverage to uninsurable residents. The federal government also operated a temporary high-risk pool program established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions in advance of when broader insurance market changes took effect in 2014. This issue brief reviews the history of these programs to provide context for some of the potential benefits and challenges of a high-risk pool.

In this Wall Street Journal Think Tank column, Drew Altman examines how Republicans would “split the risk pools” between the healthier and the sick in their Affordable Care Act replacement plans, using state high risk pools as a fallback for higher cost patients, and examines the steps that would be necessary to make them effective based on prior experience in the states.

Larry Levitt’s August 2015 piece analyzes Affordable Care Act replacement plans proposed by 2016 Republican presidential candidates, and compares them to the health care law. The post is now available at the Los Angeles Times.

A new animated video features the YouToons as they get ready for Obamacare and explore health insurance changes under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The cartoon serves as a health reform tutorial for consumers and organizations.

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 short cartoon explains the problems with the current health care system, the health reform changes that are happening now, and the big changes coming in 2014 as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). You can view the video on our site and it is also available on YouTube.

This briefing looks into the key challenges facing states, including working within state legislative cycles against tight deadlines in the federal law, creating new roles at the state level as state budgets are being squeezed, and others. It looks at both near-term provisions, such as high risk pools, as well…

This briefing focuses on how the reform law affects access to private coverage, including the new federal high-risk pools, tax credits for small businesses, health insurance exchanges, the individual mandate and employer obligations. This briefing, cosponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation, explored these and…