Comparing Your Options when Choosing Health Insurance

Comparing Your Options when Choosing Health Insurance PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health maintenance organizations
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description

Comparing Your Options when Choosing Health Insurance

Comparing Your Options when Choosing Health Insurance PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health maintenance organizations
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book Here

Book Description


Care Without Coverage

Care Without Coverage PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309083435
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.

Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination

Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030946921X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.

Coverage Matters

Coverage Matters PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309076099
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Roughly 40 million Americans have no health insurance, private or public, and the number has grown steadily over the past 25 years. Who are these children, women, and men, and why do they lack coverage for essential health care services? How does the system of insurance coverage in the U.S. operate, and where does it fail? The first of six Institute of Medicine reports that will examine in detail the consequences of having a large uninsured population, Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care, explores the myths and realities of who is uninsured, identifies social, economic, and policy factors that contribute to the situation, and describes the likelihood faced by members of various population groups of being uninsured. It serves as a guide to a broad range of issues related to the lack of insurance coverage in America and provides background data of use to policy makers and health services researchers.

The Medicare Handbook

The Medicare Handbook PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Book Description


The Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act PDF Author: Tamara Thompson
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737771496
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.

Choose the Right Health Insurance

Choose the Right Health Insurance PDF Author: Donna Carden
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781731106964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Ultimate guide to help you choose the right health plan for you and your family. Compare the different types of policies available and help to understand confusing terms. This guide will help you understand what type of plan you need according to your current medical situation.

Understanding Consumer Health Insurance Decision-Making Under the Affordable Care Act

Understanding Consumer Health Insurance Decision-Making Under the Affordable Care Act PDF Author: Petra Willis Rasmussen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), millions of Americans have gained coverage, many for the first time in their lives. The law has created more options for affordable coverage and put millions into the driver seat when it comes to selecting their coverage and enrolling in a health plan. The individual health insurance market has undergone significant changes under the ACA, including the creation of state-based and federally facilitated marketplaces where individuals in all states can go to shop for and enroll in potentially subsidized individual market coverage. This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of consumer decision-making in this new health insurance landscape. Through three sets of analyses of consumer behavior during the insurance decision-making process, this dissertation will provide needed updates to the literature on this topic. It also highlights key considerations for policymakers and agencies to weigh when evaluating how consumers might respond to policies that change their available coverage options. The first paper examines two key components of health plans that individuals weigh when making enrollment decisions - cost and quality. The ACA requires both federally facilitated and state-based marketplaces to provide easy to understand plan quality information to customers shopping for coverage. Through two hypothetical choice experiments, this paper examines how consumers weighed health plan costs and quality in different choice environments and explored the consumer characteristics associated with a preference for high quality plans as well as with the selection of inferior plans. In each experiment, participants responded to a series of choice scenarios that asked them to choose between five health plans that differed only in their costs and quality ratings, represented by stars. Overall, between scenarios individuals were willing to pay more for higher quality plans when the quality ratings of all available plans were lower, when the higher quality plan's rating was two stars higher rather than one star higher than other plans, and when the price differential was lower. More risk averse participants had higher predicted probabilities of consistently choosing the higher quality, more expensive plan. However, a significant portion of the study population made poor decisions: more than a third of participants chose a dominated plan at least once. The less numerate, those with higher risk-seeking tendencies, and those with low health insurance literacy had the highest predicted probabilities of choosing poorly. The second experiment also found that individuals are more likely to choose a dominated plan when the quality star ratings are similar across plans. The second and third papers use data from California's health insurance marketplace, Covered California, to examine consumer behavior following the implementation of silver loading in 2018. Silver loading is a policy California and other states put into place after the cancellation of federal funding for a set of subsidies included in the ACA that reduce the amount of cost-sharing required by low-income enrollees in silver tier marketplace plans, known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs). Silver loading placed the cost of providing CSRs in the absence of federal funding onto the premiums of silver plans, subsequently raising premium subsidies which are tied to the cost of silver coverage. The second paper focuses on enrollment in silver plans that became dominated because of silver loading. This paper looks at enrollment in these plans over time (both before and after they became dominated) and by enrollees' prior year enrollment decisions to examine differences in enrollment by pre-existing biases regarding metal tier labeling and the potential role of status quo bias. Overall, more than 60,000 Californians enrolled in a dominated plan in 2018 and, on average, households enrolled in dominated plans in 2018 spent an additional $38.87 per month in premiums. Households that were enrolled in silver coverage in the year before the examined silver plans became dominated had the highest predicted probability of enrolling in a dominated plan in 2018. The third paper examines Covered California consumers' decisions to switch health plans during open enrollment over the first four open enrollment periods where individuals could renew their coverage (2015-2018). Under the ACA, switching rates in the individual market have been much higher than those previously seen in other markets. Looking at re-enrollees in Covered California, this paper provides data on consumer switching behavior over time and identifies the consumer, plan, and choice environment characteristics associated with consumers' decisions to change their coverage during open enrollment. The percentage of re-enrollees in Covered California who made changes to their coverage steadily increased between the 2014-15 and 2017-18 open enrollment periods. Following the implementation of silver loading the proportion of consumers who moved into gold plans during the 2017-18 open enrollment period drastically increased, compared to previous years. Among bronze or silver plan enrollees who switched metal tiers during open enrollment, those who could enroll in gold plans that were no more than $49 per month more expensive than their initial bronze or silver plan had a significantly higher probability of switching into gold coverage than those who faced larger premium differences. The results of this dissertation identify several consumer, health plan, and choice environment characteristics that can influence consumer health insurance decision-making. Policymakers and marketplace regulators can use this work to help inform the decisions they make around marketplace choice architecture, policies aimed at retaining enrollees and recruiting new consumers, and decisions about re-enrollment for consumers who do not actively renew their coverage during annual re-enrollment periods.

Employment and Health Benefits

Employment and Health Benefits PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309048273
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
The United States is unique among economically advanced nations in its reliance on employers to provide health benefits voluntarily for workers and their families. Although it is well known that this system fails to reach millions of these individuals as well as others who have no connection to the work place, the system has other weaknesses. It also has many advantages. Because most proposals for health care reform assume some continued role for employers, this book makes an important contribution by describing the strength and limitations of the current system of employment-based health benefits. It provides the data and analysis needed to understand the historical, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped present-day arrangements and outlines what might be done to overcome some of the access, value, and equity problems associated with current employer, insurer, and government policies and practices. Health insurance terminology is often perplexing, and this volume defines essential concepts clearly and carefully. Using an array of primary sources, it provides a store of information on who is covered for what services at what costs, on how programs vary by employer size and industry, and on what governments doâ€"and do not doâ€"to oversee employment-based health programs. A case study adapted from real organizations' experiences illustrates some of the practical challenges in designing, managing, and revising benefit programs. The sometimes unintended and unwanted consequences of employer practices for workers and health care providers are explored. Understanding the concepts of risk, biased risk selection, and risk segmentation is fundamental to sound health care reform. This volume thoroughly examines these key concepts and how they complicate efforts to achieve efficiency and equity in health coverage and health care. With health care reform at the forefront of public attention, this volume will be important to policymakers and regulators, employee benefit managers and other executives, trade associations, and decisionmakers in the health insurance industry, as well as analysts, researchers, and students of health policy.

Health Insurance 101

Health Insurance 101 PDF Author: Marilynn Drohan
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
When choosing the right health insurance plan for your specific needs and budget, it's important to consider all the options available to you. However, we understand that this is easier said than done and that there are a lot of confusing factors to keep in mind. Whether you're trying to find the best type of plan to choose through your employer-sponsored coverage, or you're just beginning to look into your individual health insurance options, this guide aims to break down the basics and provide you with additional resources to supplement your insurance journey. This is a useful, factual, non-partisan look at the current system for health insurance and getting health care in the U.S., including practical tips to help you save money on your health care, whether you have insurance or not. It is especially intended for self-employed people, freelancers, small-business owners, and others without access to employment-based group health insurance to understand all of the options and ways to save money. However, anyone can benefit from the useful tips and tricks as well as the overviews of important laws and issues for context. This well-researched book is full of valuable information, insights, and money-saving tips, and includes topics such as: -Different types of health insurance demystified and explained in a straightforward way -Practical advice on how to evaluate health plan options -How the Affordable Care Act of 2010 affected health insurance -How the premium subsidies work for individual insurance -Pros and cons of health care options and links for further reading -Interesting factoids on the continuing upward trend in healthcare costs and potential solutions Some of the many programs and options discussed include: -Individual insurance from the marketplace and outside the marketplace -Employment-based insurance for small and large businesses -Health savings accounts and ways to use them -Government programs including Medicaid, Medicare, and military heath programs -Short-term health insurance, accident insurance, and dental and vision insurance -Healthcare cost-sharing ministries -Paying cash, negotiating discounts, concierge medicine, and direct primary care -Telemedicine, medical tourism, discount cards, health clinics, and charity care