By Grace-Marie Turner & Doug Badger — A few states have found a key to undoing some of Obamacare’s damage to their individual health insurance markets by redirecting some federal funding to help sick people. These states are providing separate assistance to those with the highest health costs, thereby reducing premiums and increasing enrollment for healthy...
by Doug Badger & Edmund Haislmaier— Obamacare’s rigid and centralized federal regulation of the nongroup market is failing. Premiums have risen, choices have contracted, and enrollment in individual policies continues to fall. Section 1332 of the Obamacare statute provides states with very limited authority to escape Obamacare’s mandates and test new approaches to undoing some...
by Grace-Marie Turner — Yes, people with pre-existing conditions should be protected. That is a hot issue on the campaign trail as Democrats hammer their Republican opponents over the threat that repealing Obamacare could mean citizens would lose pre-ex protections. But, like so many other things with Obamacare, the health overhaul law offers a promise but produces collateral damage...
by Grace-Marie Turner — The Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services is continuing the drumbeat of modernizing the two gargantuan programs it runs to generate more accountability, greater transparency, and provide better value for both patients and taxpayers. Administrator Seema Verma announced on Thursday a new proposed rule that would bring more accountability into...
by Doug Badger — It turns out sabotage might be overrated. A new study by the Center for American Progress argues Congress’s repeal of the individual mandate and a proposed Trump administration rule that would expand the sale and renewal of short-term policies will have a devastating effect on 2019 premiums. These acts of “sabotage”...
Congress ordered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to come up with a new payment system for the more than 400 million clinical laboratory tests that Medicare pays for each year so that prices would be more closely aligned with those paid by private insurers. But the new system relies on data...