Series dissects and explains the Affordable Care Act

From the Kaiser Family Foundation:

The Kaiser Family Foundation today launched a new series of short notes that will dissect and help explain the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the private health insurance market. The series, “Notes on Health Insurance and Reform” will feature timely posts that clarify complex regulatory and insurance topics, provide context for ongoing policy debates, and foreshadow significant implementation challenges.

The series is part of the new Kaiser Initiative on Health Reform and Private Insurance, which will examine the implications of changes in the private insurance market under the Affordable Care Act and inform federal and state policymakers as they implement provisions of the health reform law. The initiative focuses on such topics as new rules that make insurance more accessible to people with pre-existing health conditions and require a minimum level of coverage; the creation of insurance purchasing exchanges by states; state review of proposed premium increases; and the design of tax credits to subsidize coverage for modest-income families.

Posts will be authored by Kaiser experts, including the co-executive directors of the Foundation’s new initiative: Larry Levitt, Senior Vice President for Special Initiatives and Senior Advisor to the President at the Foundation, and Gary Claxton, Vice President and Director of the Health Care Marketplace Project. Initial posts address:

• Recent changes to the high risk pool program and what it may suggest about the relationship between the federal government and states on other aspects of reform.
• The lack of reliable information about insurance premiums and underlying costs, and how new regulations on state and federal reviews of unreasonable premium increases could help.
• Why consumers may need help with the financial aspects of buying coverage through the health insurance exchanges.
• How the approaches and decisions made by states and the federal government to implement health reform could substantially affect its ultimate results.

All posts in the series will be available online on Kaiser’s Health Reform Source, a site providing basic information and in-depth analysis on the implementation of health reform, and through an RSS feed that can be accessed through any feed reader.