Affordable Care Act
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Spending on Preventive Services Represents a Small Fraction of Total Health Care Spending, but Costs to Individuals Could Be High without ACA Protection
Read more: Spending on Preventive Services Represents a Small Fraction of Total Health Care Spending, but Costs to Individuals Could Be High without ACA ProtectionThe Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurers to cover certain services without charging patients out-of-pocket. These services include routine preventive care, such as wellness visits, immunizations, contraceptive services, and cancer and other disease screenings. In September 2022, a federal court ruled portions of the law’s preventive services provision unconstitutional. If the court decision stands, it…
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NPR: The COVID Relief Bill Expands the Affordable Care Act. It Doesn’t Come Cheap
Tags: Affordable Care Act
Read more: NPR: The COVID Relief Bill Expands the Affordable Care Act. It Doesn’t Come CheapHCCI’s research on commercial insurance payments to providers was mentioned in an NPR article on recent expansions to the Affordable Care Act. From the article: “For example, health insurers in the Atlanta area pay primary care physicians $93 on average for a basic patient visit, according to an analysis of 2017 commercial insurance data by…
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NBER: Hospital Pricing and Public Payments
Tags: Affordable Care Act, Inpatient Spending, NBER, Peer Reviewed Journals, Readmissions, Value Based CareRead more: NBER: Hospital Pricing and Public PaymentsABSTRACT: A longstanding debate in health economics and health policy concerns how hospitals adjust prices with private insurers following reductions in public funding. A common argument is that hospitals engage in some degree of “cost-shifting,” wherein hospitals increase prices with private insurers in response to a reduction in public payments; however, evidence of significant costshifting is…
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JAMA Oncology: Association Between Quality of Care for Breast Cancer and Health Insurance Exchange Coverage An Analysis of Use of Radiation Therapy After Breast-Conserving Surgery
Read more: JAMA Oncology: Association Between Quality of Care for Breast Cancer and Health Insurance Exchange Coverage An Analysis of Use of Radiation Therapy After Breast-Conserving SurgeryABSTRACT Research comparing quality of cancer care by insurance categories concluded that cancer patients without insurance or with Medicaid experienced inferior quality of care compared with those with private insurance. A new insurance category created from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is insurance purchased from the Health Insurance Marketplace (also known as the exchange). The present…
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Slate: A Failed Cure for Health Care Costs
Read more: Slate: A Failed Cure for Health Care CostsBy: Helaine Olen It’s a new year, and you know what that means: Your health insurance deductible just reset. Which for many of us means looking forward to paying a significant amount out of pocket for health care until we’ve spent enough for our insurance payments to kick in. According to the Henry J. Kaiser…
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Washington Post: How companies are quietly changing your health plan to make you pay more
Read more: Washington Post: How companies are quietly changing your health plan to make you pay moreBy: Carolyn Johnson While politicians have been embroiled in a fiery debate over President Obama’s signature health-care law, a quiet but profound shift is fundamentally reshaping how health insurance works for the roughly 155 million Americans who receive coverage through their employers. A national survey of employer health benefits released Wednesday shows how much deductibles…
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Selected Health Care Trends for Young Adults: 2007-2012
Tags: Affordable Care Act, Emergency Room, Inpatient Spending, Mental Health and Substance Use, Outpatient SpendingRead more: Selected Health Care Trends for Young Adults: 2007-2012This issue brief is one of the first to examine health care trends for young adults (ages 19-25) with employer-sponsored insurance before and after implementation of Section 1001 of the Affordable Care Act that allows parents to include their adult children in family health plans.
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Health Affairs: Health Spending Slowdown Is Mostly Due To Economic Factors, Not Structural Change In The Health Care Sector
Tags: Affordable Care Act, Commercially Insured, Health Affairs, Market Concentration, Peer Reviewed JournalsRead more: Health Affairs: Health Spending Slowdown Is Mostly Due To Economic Factors, Not Structural Change In The Health Care SectorABSTRACT: The source of the recent slowdown in health spending growth remains unclear. We used new and unique data on privately insured people to estimate the effect of the economic slowdown that began in December 2007 on the rate of growth in health spending. By exploiting regional variations in the severity of the slowdown, we determined…