Last semester, I taught a course on US health insurance reform politics and policy for Duke Sanford School of Public Policy students. One option for the final was to respond to a prompt that asked if the ACA is sufficienctly embedded into the US health care and political system that it is only subject to …
Anderson On Health Insurance
Florida to Outsource the NO Function to Canada
Florida just received approval from the FDA to engage in bulk drug imports from Canada. Florida believes that if they can buy a limited set of prescription drugs at Canadian prices, the state will save oodles and oodles of money. The state is relying on the Canadian willingness and ability to credibly say “NO, not …
Florida to Outsource the NO Function to CanadaPost + Comments (70)
Medicare Buy-in and the ACA analysis
I’m just popping in as I’m waiting for the last analysis of my 2nd dissertation paper to finish running through a couple thousand bootstraps (for those who don’t know what that means, consider yourself lucky!) But there is an interesting paper in the Journal of Risk and Insurance by Handon and Minicozzi, both employees of the …
Enrollment on Healthcare.gov
The first deadline for Open Enrollment passed late last week. People who signed up for coverage on Healthcare.gov by the end of day on December 15th will, as long as they make their initial payment, have coverage starting on January 1, 2024. People in every state except IDAHO have several more weeks to sign up …
ACA Open Enrollment for January 1 ends tonight!
Anyone who wants ACA coverage to start for themselves and their household on January 1, 2024 must select a plan on Healthcare.gov or their own state based marketplace by midnight local time tonight (December 15, 2023). If you live in Idaho, today is the last day of Open Enrollment. Open Enrollment for the rest of …
ACA Open Enrollment for January 1 ends tonight!Post + Comments (6)
What do they do differently? VC backed health insurers
One of the constant items I wrote about early in my first decade at Balloon-Juice was my profound lack of understanding of what OSCAR and other VC backed health insurers did differently than what my colleagues and former colleagues at a mid-sized integrated payer-provider besides lose lots of money and get good press for doing …
What do they do differently? VC backed health insurersPost + Comments (10)
Reinsurance and marginal enrollment
Reinsurance in the ACA context is currently a state waiver program that is enacted at state discretion. Sixteen states have a reinsurance waiver. These waivers introduce state funds to pay some portion of claims. Using non-premium funds to pay some claims means premiums go down. This is important and valuable for individuals who don’t get …