Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance to states on what it would consider if states wanted to implement a Medicaid block grant for their state. Block grants in the Medicaid program would change the formula for how the federal government reimburses states for running their Medicaid program. Currently, the formula […] Read More »

The Commonwealth Fund and the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms have released a new issue brief which addresses what states have done to make individual coverage more affordable in the marketplace. The issue brief entitled “States Work to Make Individual Market Health Coverage More Affordable, But Long-Term Solutions Call for Federal Leadership” looks […] Read More »

A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the state of individual marketplace as of the end of 2019. The brief entitled “Individual Insurance Market Performance in Late 2019” looks at the issue of whether or not the elimination of the individual mandate penalty affected the marketplace in any negative way. The report […] Read More »

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has published a new blog post which summarizes what is going on at the state level on Medicaid work requirements. The blog recaps recent developments in Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia. Read More »

Yesterday, CMS released the final numbers for Open Enrollment Year 7 (OE7). During OE7, nearly 8.3 million people enrolled in a health insurance plan through healthcare.gov, including over 2 million new individuals. These numbers are for all of the states which use the federally facilitated marketplace and not the state-based marketplaces. These enrollment numbers do […] Read More »

Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the Texas v. US case. This is the court case which challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) since the individual mandate penalty was eliminated in the 2017 tax law. Previously, the Supreme Court had held that the ACA was constitutional under the taxing […] Read More »

This afternoon, CMS announced that they were extending open enrollment in the event that there were any technical difficulties which consumers encountered during the final hours of open enrollment over the weekend. The extension is going on now through Wednesday, December 18 at 3:00 AM ET. Note that the extension ends in the early morning […] Read More »

A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that 4.7 million people who do not have insurance could get a bronze plan at no cost after tax credits are taken into account. Read More »

A decision by the Fifth Circuit in the case of Texas v. US could happen at any time. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a new fact sheet which addresses the potential impact the decision in this case could have. To read more about the Texas v. US case, check out our news item from the […] Read More »

A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation looks at the participation rates for insurers from 2014 through the 2020 marketplace. The brief shows that the insurer participation rate for 2020 has improved from 2019 as the number of insurers per state has risen to 4.5 – up from 4.0 in 2019 and a […] Read More »