Category: Affordable Care Act

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By Susan Jaffe and Kaiser Health News in partnership with

While many of the significant provisions of the 2010 health law don’t take effect until 2014, some key changes have kicked already kicked in. Our partners at Kaiser Health News consulted the agencies implementing the law to track how some of these new programs are going, and compared that data to the original projections of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Obama administration. Much of the available data covers a limited period — usually through the end of 2011 or the fiscal year ending Sept. 2011.    MORE

Scorecard: What The Health Law Has Delivered, Or Not

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By Susan Jaffe |  Feb. 9, 2012 | KAISER HEALTH NEWS  in partnership with  mcclatchy skinny logo

The Obama administration Thursday unveiled final regulations detailing the new health insurance summaries that the federal health law requires plans to give to consumers to help them make informed coverage choices.

Mila Kofman, a research professor at Georgetown University… said that when consumers shop for insurance now, “co-insurance” or “annual deductible” may mean different things depending on the policy. Providing uniform information that’s easy to understand will empower consumers, she said.

“This will fundamentally change the way insurance is sold and the way is bought, and will make it much easier for consumers,” she said.   [More from KHN or McClatchy]

 

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By Susan Jaffe |  January 24, 2012 | KAISER HEALTH NEWS         

Leaders from some of the nation’s top consumer and seniors advocacy groups today urged President Barack Obama not to weaken a key consumer provision of his signature health care overhaul law.

The provision requires health insurers and employers to use standardized, easy-to-understand information documents to describe health plan benefits and costs.   These forms would explain how much each plan pays on average for three common medical conditions and include a glossary of insurance terms. [Continued here]

 

Consumers add their 2 cents to health law’s plan labels

By Susan Jaffe | June 23, 2011 | Kaiser Health News in partnership with 

BUFFALO, N.Y. – At an office tucked next to Macy’s at the Boulevard Mall, Susan Kleimann pushes two sets of papers across a table to a woman in her 40s wearing a gray sweatshirt. “We aren’t testing you,” assures Kleimann, who runs a market research firm in Bethesda, Md. “We are testing health plan information.”

Kleimann explains that they will be comparing the two documents describing two hypothetical insurance plans. “What you tell us today will help us improve the information and be sure that consumers can easily understand what they read about different health plans,” she says.  While a video camera captures every moment, the woman accepts the task with gusto. She says getting rid of some columns will make the form clearer and changing the blue ink to black will be easier on the eyes. But the last page is trouble. “This is really wordy,” she says. “I would have to put it down and go get a bowl of ice cream and go back to it later.”

Starting next March, all insurers and employers will have to make it easier for consumers faced with the ordeal of picking a health plan. Under the 2010 health law, they’ll have to provide health policy information that the average enrollee can understand and use to compare with other plans. The forms were developed by a group assembled by the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners, and policymakers are getting feedback the same way advertisers learn the best way to sell orange juice: consumer-focus-group testing.

The woman in the gray sweatshirt is among eight people who received a $75 stipend to sit in a windowless room and spend 90 minutes reviewing the forms and answering questions. The one-on-one sessions, spread over two days last month along with an identical round in St. Louis, are sponsored by Consumers Union. Two representatives from the group, a Kaiser Health News reporter and other observers silently watch from a darkened hideaway room behind a one-way mirror; sound from the session is piped in through an audio system. [FULL story from Kaiser Health News] [ABRIDGED from Los Angeles Times]…

New labels will soon help consumers choose health plans

 

By Susan Jaffe, May 7, 2011, KAISER HEALTH NEWS  in collaboration with The Chicago Tribune

Cars have sticker prices, ketchup bottles have nutrition-facts labels, and soon health plans will get coverage labels.

For the first time, consumers  shopping for a health policy will be able to get a good idea of how Chicago Tribune logomuch of the costs different plans will cover for three medical conditions: maternity care, treatment for diabetes and breast cancer. And because buying insurance is more complicated than buying a can of soup, the proposed insurance labels are two pages long.  ….The new “coverage facts labels” are required under the health overhaul law, which directed the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners to draft them. [MORE]…

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By Susan Jaffe  |  April 26, 2011

KAISER HEALTH NEWS in collaboration with wapo

Despite tough economic times, there are some things the government can’t give away.

Starting this year, seniors enrolled in Medicare no longer have to pay for more than a dozen tests and other services to help prevent or control cancer and other costly and debilitating diseases. These benefits, which also include an annual wellness exam, are part of the new federal health-care law.

But big crowds aren’t lining up for free mammograms or colonoscopies, although early data indicate that the free wellness checkup is luring patients.  CONTINUED  

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Medicare Patients Aren’t Taking Advantage Of Some Newly Free Tests

Obama administration delaying some rules for appealing health insurance denials

By Susan Jaffe |  March 30, 2011 | Kaiser Health News  produced in collaboration with   

The Obama administration is delaying until next January its enforcement of some new rules designed to protect patients who appeal insurers’ decisions to deny or reduce health care benefits… not affected by the latest government announcement is the timeframe given to consumers to file an appeal. Under most plans, beneficiaries have 180 days after receiving a denial notice to request a review…. more
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Little-provision provision of overhaul law requires companies to tell it like it is

By SUSAN JAFFE                  updated Dec. 16, 2010

KAISER HEALTH NEWS in partnership with  

Choosing a health insurance policy should be easier if consumers use the simple chart and other information that state insurance commissioners approved Thursday.

“It will force the insurance companies to reveal information in a consistent way,” says Bonnie Burns, a policy specialist for California Health Advocates, a consumer health advocacy group. “And it should make it easier for people to understand what they’re getting and not getting.”

 Under a little-known provision of the health overhaul law, insurers will be required to provide their benefits information on a standardized chart using the same plain English terms as other companies to help shoppers understand and compare complicated policies.      MORE

Speak plain English, health insurers told

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HEALTH CARE REFORM EXPLAINED        Your questions answered                      [weekly column]   


By: Susan Jaffe | from       BULLETIN  | July 5, 2010

Q. We own a small business and can’t afford health insurance for our part-time employees. Will health care reform make things even tougher by making us pay for their health coverage?

A. The law does not require businesses to provide health insurance (although large companies can be assessed a penalty if they don’t). But if you offer coverage, as a small company, you can receive tax credits worth up to 35 percent of the cost of that insurance for tax years 2010 to 2013, and up to 25 percent for nonprofit organizations.                   More

The New Health Care Law and Small Businesses