CELEBRATING THE ACA ANNIVERSARY
This past Wednesday marked the 12-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being signed into law. To celebrate the anniversary, we released a new blog post which highlights what the ACA means for people with disabilities. We also participated in a tweet storm on Wednesday afternoon. You can still view those posts by checking the hashtags #ACA12 or #ThxACA.
In recognition of this anniversary, the Department of Health and Human Services released new reports which highlight the benefits of the ACA and how it is benefiting consumers. To read more about these reports or for links to them, check out our news item. Throughout the week, HHS has also been celebrating the ACA. You can read more about these anniversary celebrations by checking out the HHS toolkit.
Other organizations have also been celebrating the ACA anniversary, including our partners at Community Catalyst. To celebrate the ACA, they released to new blog posts which highlights how the law has greatly improved women’s health and access for people with disabilities through quality to access of care, lowering premiums, eliminating coverage denial for pre-existing conditions, and expanding maternal and family planning services. To read these two blog posts, check out the links below:
- The Affordable Care Act is Crucial to Women’s Health
- Marking 12 Years of the ACA Improving the Lives of People with Disabilities
As part of our partnership with Community Catalyst, we have a project which highlights opportunities for people with disabilities to get access to health coverage through the ACA marketplace or Medicaid. As part of this project, we have resources you need to help with outreach including graphics like the one below which highlight the fact that the ACA is still the law of the land. These graphics are available in the Community Catalyst Outreach Hub.
Other organizations were also celebrating the ACA anniversary by releasing new resources, including Families USA which examines the ACA’s promise of coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) released a new blog post on Wednesday which discussed the ACA anniversary and how much has changed with the law since it was first passed.
This month, we’ve been running a series of live interviews with members of the disability community to learn how they make the most of their insurance coverage. So far, we have covered the topics of rehabilitation/habilitation benefits, mental health and medical devices. Please join our conversation every Wednesday afternoon between now and April 6th as we discuss how to access care and get the most out of your insurance. Next week’s interview will be on getting the most out of your health insurance related to access to specialists. You can access this live stream through our Facebook page or YouTube channel.
For the full list of upcoming topics as well as dates/times, check out our news item. You can also view archives of the conversations on our Facebook page or at the following links on our YouTube channel:
- March 9: Rehabilitation/Habilitation Benefits
- March 16: Mental Health
- March 23: Medical Devices
Previously, we reported on CMS’s proposed Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2023. Comments on these proposed rules were due in January and the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) has been doing a series of blog posts which summarize the comments submitted by various interest groups. Recently, they added a new blog post in this series highlighting the comments by state insurance departments.
Archives of our weekly updates are available on the NDNRC website.