In the next few days and weeks we’ll see the first wave of reactions from health plans – and unsubsidized Affordable Care Act exchange shoppers, because of premium increases – to President Trump’s decision to cut off immediately the cost-sharing subsidies to health plans participating in the exchanges.
The Trump administration dealt a one-two punch to the Affordable Care Act on Thursday. Trump’s executive order would give Americans the option of buying lower-cost health insurance, but also could usher back the bare-bones insurance options that the Affordable Care Act was designed to eliminate.
In addition, Trump directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to end the cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) to health insurers required under the ACA effective immediately. The payments always have been controversial, and the Trump administration, in justifying its action, noted that House Republicans earlier successfully challenged them in court. Continue reading
At 3 pm ET on Thursday, Oct. 12, Victoria Colliver of Politico will lead a conversation with Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, about lessons learned during the first years of enrollment in the ACA exchange. They’ll also discuss how the exchange is adapting to the changed political climate for health care in the Trump administration.
HHS recently announced that it would slash marketing, advertising, and signup assistance for the 2018 signup season, which begins Nov. 1. That the administration was reducing outreach should not have been a surprise, given that as soon as President Trump took office, his HHS leadership team pulled back on advertising and marketing during the critical final days of the 2017 signup season.
Spending on marketing and advertising for the 2018 plan year will drop from $100 million spent on 2017 sign-ups to $10 million. Funding for consumer helpers called “navigators” will be cut 40 percent – from $62.5 million for 2017 to $36.8 million for the coming season. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the ACA, says navigators were falling short of their sign-up targets and wasting money and asserted that “the new funding formula will ensure accountability within the Navigator program.” (For more on the administration policy, see in this Vox story.) Continue reading
AHCJ is excited to announce an offer for significantly discounted access to LexisNexis for association members. The offer, made possible in partnership with the Contently Foundation, a nonprofit organization for investigative reporting, will be of particular interest to AHCJ’s freelance members.
LexisNexis is a vital resource for all types of journalists and writers, but it’s particularly valuable for those covering health care in that it contains some 250 industry publications, including the American Journal of Law & Medicine, The American Journal of Surgery, The Lancet, Biotech Business, Modern Healthcare and Occupational Health. Continue reading
Photo: Army Medicine via Flickr
It seems like every week there’s a new press release about a new health innovation center opening up shop.
Since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which emphasized the transition from patient volume to value, innovation centers have been popping up all over the country. Becker’s Hospital Review has identified at least 50 hospitals with innovation programs. Continue reading