Tag Archives: marketplace

Get county-level data to report on competition in insurance marketplace

Leave a reply

downloading-and-uploading-data-iconAs large insurers, such as United Healthcare, Humana and Aetna, drop out of the Healthcare.gov marketplace, consumers are left with fewer and fewer choices, especially in certain geographic areas.

Sarah Kliff, Sarah Frostenson and Soo Oh of Vox gathered the data to show us just how little competition there will be:

“There are currently 687 counties on the Healthcare.gov marketplace with just one insurer signed up to sell in 2017 — nearly four times the 182 counties that had one insurer this year.”

Continue reading →

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

Things to consider when covering recent departures from the ACA marketplace

Leave a reply
Photo: Peg via Flickr

Photo: Peg via Flickr

Decisions by United Healthcare, Humana and now Aetna to shrink their footprint in the ACA exchanges – along with the collapse of the most of the co-ops – are likely to significantly decrease competition in some parts of the country next year.

Among the states likely to be most affected are: Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and probably parts of Florida. Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

D.C. chapter learns how ACA affects craft brewery, other small businesses

Leave a reply
Photo: Phil Galewitz

Photo: Phil Galewitz

About 25 Washington, D.C., area journalists met on Sept. 30 to learn about how the Affordable Care Act was affecting a local brewery and discover how the district’s health insurance exchange was working to help such small employers gain coverage for their employees. Continue reading →

Phil Galewitz (@philgalewitz), is a senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News covering Medicaid, Medicare, long-term care, hospitals and state health issues. He is a former member of AHCJ's board of directors.

Things to keep in mind as we anticipate the King v. Burwell ruling

1 Reply
Photo by dbking via Flickr

Photo by dbking via Flickr

We’ve put up a tip sheet and written about the King v. Burwell case, but now that the ruling is imminent, we wanted to bring one more good one-stop-shopping resource to your attention and share a few tips.

The Alliance for Health Reform has issued a very good four-page tool kit – links to background articles, think tank papers, issue briefs and lots of sources. One caveat – it says that 7.5 million are subsidized in the affected states but the most recent government numbers are 6.4 million.

Other things to remember

There are 37 states using HealthCare.gov (with Hawaii, soon 38). But the reason you keep reading that 34 states are affected is that 34 are federal exchanges. Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Reviewing patterns in marketplace insurance pools

Leave a reply
Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr.com.

Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr.com.

Back when states were deciding whether to run their own exchanges or let the feds do it, they also had to make a lot of decisions about how their exchanges would operate.

One question was whether to have a “clearinghouse” and let any health plan that met the legal requirements participate in the marketplace. The other option was to be an “active purchaser,” and to have the state exchange directly negotiate with the health plans over premiums, provider networks etc.

The rationale, for each model: Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.