Affordable Care Act
kkrisberg | August 11, 2015One of the big criticisms that opponents of the Affordable Care Act love to trot out is its impact on the economy — one phrase you often hear is “job killer.” In fact, in 2011, Republicans in the House actually introduced legislation officially titled “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” That bill didn’t make it far. However, a new report finds that “job-killing” isn’t just hyperbole; it’s just plain wrong.
Earlier this month, the Urban Institute released a new report on the ACA and employment, asking “Has the ACA been a job killer?” Authors Bowen Garrett and Robert Kaestner noted…
lborkowski | July 30, 2015On July 30th, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Social Security Amendment Act that created Medicare and Medicaid. At the signing ceremony, President Johnson enrolled President Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary and gave a speech on the importance of the legislation. The President’s description of the law’s impact describes the conditions it aimed to alleviate:
No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy…
kkrisberg | July 10, 2015Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, American women are saving hundreds of dollars on birth control, according to the first study to document the impact of health reform on prescription contraception spending.
To conduct the study, which was published this month in Health Affairs, researchers analyzed claims data from a large national insurer between January 2008 and June 2013, eventually examining data linked to more than 790,800 women. They found that the average out-of-pocket expense decreased for nearly all prescription contraceptive methods on the market. In particular, the average out-of-…
cmonforton | June 25, 2015The American Public Health Association (APHA) takes the prize for the best headline in response to today’s Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA): "Six million sighs of relief."
APHA’s executive director Georges Benjamin, MD elaborated:
“We are pleased the court understood the legislative history and intent of this law… We know that when people can’t afford health insurance, they don’t get health care — and get sicker as a result. …APHA and the public health community rejoice in today’s decision, and look forward to working with the administration and Congress to realize…
kkrisberg | May 29, 2015Another day, another study that finds poverty is linked to adverse and often preventable health outcomes. This time, it’s vision loss.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new data finding that poverty is significantly correlated with severe vision loss, which is defined as being blind or having serious difficulties seeing even with glasses. In examining data from the American Community Survey, researchers found that among counties in the top quartile for severe vision loss, more than 55 percent were also in the top quartile for poverty. The South is home to…
kkrisberg | May 13, 2015In a perfect example of how the Affordable Care Act is broadening access to relatively low-cost and potentially life-saving interventions, a new study finds that the health reform law likely led more than 1 million young women to seek out the human papillomavirus vaccine and protect themselves against cervical cancer.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers studied the impact of two ACA provisions: one requiring insurance providers to extend dependent coverage through age 26 and another that required insurers to offer a range of preventive services, such as…
kkrisberg | May 12, 2015More than $30 million in Arkansas, $25.8 million in Kentucky, $105.5 million in Washington and $180 million in Michigan. That’s how much money just four states during just one fiscal year saved under their newly expanded Medicaid programs.
A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) summarizes the benefits of Medicaid expansions on uninsurance rates, state health care spending and uncompensated care, finding that “contrary to critics’ claims that Medicaid expansion is financially unsustainable for states, there is increasing evidence that expansion has saved states…
kkrisberg | April 14, 2015Low income and poor health tend to go hand in hand — that’s not a particularly surprising or new statement. However, according to family medicine doctor Steven Woolf, we have yet to truly grasp the extent to which income shapes a person’s health and opportunity to live a long life. And if we don’t confront the widening income inequality gap, he says things will only get worse.
“There’s a general awareness that people who have poor education or low incomes have worse health outcomes, but our sense is that we don’t really appreciate the magnitude of the problem,” Woolf told me. “Every time I…
kkrisberg | February 27, 2015“Established by the state.” Those are the four words at the center of an upcoming Supreme Court case that could strip affordable health insurance coverage from millions of working families and result in billions of dollars in uncompensated care costs.
The case is known as King v. Burwell and at its core is the question of whether residents who live in states with federally administered health insurance marketplaces, versus state-run marketplaces, are eligible to receive insurance subsidies. The plaintiffs in the case claim that those four little words in one section of the entire Affordable…
cmonforton | December 30, 2014While we take a breather during this holiday season, we’re re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on January 6, 2014.
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
Now that it’s 2014, millions more people in the US have health insurance coverage (either Medicaid or private insurance), thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In the weeks ahead, many of the newly insured will be visiting healthcare providers to address ongoing health concerns. The Washington Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar and Karen Tumulty highlighted one person with a pent-up demand for healthcare, Sharon Kelly of…
lborkowski | December 29, 2014by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPH
When my colleagues here at The Pump Handle asked me if I would like to comment on the recent demise of "Single Payer" health insurance in Vermont, I hesitated because my Vermont hands-on experience is so dated. I moved on from being Vermont State Health Commissioner almost 40 years ago. But on second thought, I may have learned some things during my time in Vermont (and from 1970 to 1972 in Quebec) that can contribute to understanding health insurance in Vermont and in the US more generally.
How did I happen to move to Montreal? Canada had just authorized…
kkrisberg | December 23, 2014With the second round of open enrollment now underway, the Affordable Care Act is expected to help narrow racial and ethnic disparities in insurance coverage, a new report finds. However, not all communities are predicted to benefit equally. Because nearly half of the country’s legislatures decided against expanding Medicaid eligibility, black Americans may continue to face difficulties finding quality, affordable health coverage.
This month, the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center released a new report detailing racial and ethnic differences in insurance rates under the ACA. Using data…
lborkowski | December 15, 2014The latest issue of the journal Health Affairs focuses on children's health, and one of the major topics is health insurance for children. A look at the Kaiser Family Foundation's coverage statistics shows that in 2013, 49% of children ages 0 - 18 had employer-sponsored coverage, 39% were covered by Medicaid or another public program, 5% had other private coverage, and 8% were uninsured. There are three main ways US children get health insurance coverage:
Medicaid: The federal government pays a portion of healthcare costs for Medicaid beneficiaries, and in exchange requires that states extend…
lborkowski | November 17, 2014On Saturday, Healthcare.gov opened for enrollment in 2015 health insurance plans, and so far it’s proceeding without the horrific technical problems that greeted would-be enrollees last year. This year, as will be the case in future years, the enrollment window is just three months long. People can renew the coverage they had last year or choose a new plan. Those with incomes of between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (in 2014, $11,670 - $46,680 for a one-person household, $23,850 - $95,400 for a household of four) are eligible for subsidies to help them afford premiums.
The Obama…
lborkowski | September 16, 2014New findings from CDC's National Health Interview Survey show the uninsured rate at its lowest level since the agency started tracking this statistic 17 years ago. In the first quarter of 2014, an estimated 13.1% of the US population did not have health insurance at the time of interview. That figure was 15.4% in 1997, and rose to 16.0% in 2010 before it began falling.
Vox's Sarah Kliff points out that the percentage of US children without health insurance has dropped more dramatically than that of the US population as a whole, from 13.9% in 1997 to 6.6% in 2014. Much of the credit for that…
lborkowski | June 11, 2014One of the things policy wonks are keeping an eye on as the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented is the proportion of employers who stop offering employees insurance and instead give their workers money they can use to pay premiums of plans sold on health insurance exchanges (or marketplaces). As Robert Pear reports in the New York Times, though, a new IRS ruling will discourage employers from doing that. The IRS will not consider employer arrangements that give workers premium funds (for purchasing insurance through exchanges) to satisfy the ACA requirements, which means employers could…
kkrisberg | May 27, 2014Late last year as many Americans purchased affordable health insurance for the first time, others opened their mailboxes to find notification that their coverage had been cancelled. The story erupted across media channels, as President Obama had promised that people could keep their plans, but the overall issue was presented with little perspective. Thankfully, a new study offers something that’s become seemingly rare these days: context.
Published in May in the journal Health Affairs, the study examined the stability of the nonemployer-based insurance market in the years before the…
lborkowski | May 21, 2014Last week was National Women’s Health Week, and the Kaiser Family Foundation used the occasion to release the report Women and Health Care in the Early Years of the ACA: Key Findings from the 2013 Kaiser Women’s Health Survey, by Alina Salganicoff, Usha Ranji, Adara Beamesderfer, and Nisha Kurani. The telephone survey of 3,015 women ages 15 – 64 was conducted before the launch of the health-insurance exchanges and several states’ Medicaid expansions, but after several other key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Starting with plan years beginning after September 22, 2010,…
kkrisberg | May 15, 2014$569 million. That’s how much revenue community health centers will miss out on because their state legislators decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility. The loss means that many community health centers will continue to struggle to serve all those in need, others will have to cut back on services and some could be forced to shut down altogether.
“In some ways, it’s status quo,” Peter Shin told me. “But for many of them, it’s a bleak status quo.”
Shin co-authored a recent report on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on uninsured patients at community health centers, zeroing in on…
kkrisberg | April 18, 2014Women aren’t the only ones at risk for depression and in need of screening services when a new baby comes into their lives. Young fathers face significant mental health challenges as well, according to a new study.
Published in the May issue of Pediatrics, researchers found that fathers who live in the same households as their children experience a decrease in depressive symptoms in the period immediately before their children are born. However, depressive symptoms among young fathers, who were around 25 years old when they became fathers, increased an average of 68 percent throughout their…