Left in Limbo: Obamacare’s Shaky Insurance Exchanges
The last major insurer selling ACA plans in Iowa has threatened to pull out. A 16-county region in Tennessee barely escaped a similar fate. Meanwhile, Nevada just added two plans to its state exchange. Instability and the prospect of sharp premium increases are roiling health exchanges across the country, and the recent passage of the American Health Care Act in the House could signal more dramatic changes. What does this portend for the future of health exchanges, the symbolic heart of Obamacare? And what do reporters need to know to bring this story home for audiences in their coverage area? This webinar will put the latest news developments in context, discuss the ways in which GOP plans and President Trump's actions may impact the health exchange markets, and offer advice for reporters covering this story in their region.
Webinars are free and made possible by the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.
Panelists
Katherine Hempstead, PhD, is the senior adviser to the executive vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since late 2013, Hempstead has directed the Foundation’s work on health insurance coverage. She also works on issues of health care price transparency and value. Previously, Hempstead was the director of the Center for Health Statistics in the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. She also served as statistician and analyst in the Office of the Attorney General, New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, and as an assistant research professor at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, where she currently holds a visiting faculty position. Earlier in her career, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Hempstead received her PhD in demography and history from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned a BA in economics and history.
Chad Terhune is a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News and California Healthline. He previously worked for the Los Angeles Times, where he spent four years covering the business of health care. He wrote about medical costs, the health-law rollout and superbug outbreaks tied to medical devices. Before the Times, he was an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Businessweek. Terhune spent more than a decade at the Journal and his stories on health insurance won a National Press Club award. At Businessweek, his cover story on subprime mortgages earned recognition from Investigative Reporters and Editors. He graduated from the University of Florida.
Ceci Connolly is the president and CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, a role she’s held since January 2016. Connolly has spent more than a decade in health care, first as a national correspondent for the Washington Post and then in leadership roles at two international consulting firms. As a reporter, she has covered six presidential campaigns and numerous natural disasters including Hurricane Katrina. She is the first non-physician to receive the Mayo Clinic Plummer Society award for promoting deeper understanding of science and medicine. For four years, Connolly served on the board of Whitman-Walker Health, a nonprofit, community health center serving 15,000 clients a year. She is a founding member of Women of Impact for Healthcare and serves on the national advisory committee of the Altarum Institute Center for Sustainable Health Spending. She is a graduate of Boston College.
Suggested reading & resources
- “Obamacare Didn’t Destroy Insurance Markets, but It Also Didn’t Fix Them,” by Reed Abelson and Haeyoun Park, New York Times
- “Insurance CEO: I’m raising Obamacare premiums because of Trump,” by Sarah Kliff, Vox
- “Health insurers plan big Obamacare rate hikes — and they blame Trump,” by Noam Levey, Los Angeles Times
- “Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers are making money on the ACA,” by Bob Herman, Axios
- “The Potential Impact of Additional Carrier Exits on the Individual Market,” by Katherine Hempstead, RWJF
- “State Flexibility to Address Health Insurance Challenges under the American Health Care Act, H.R. 1628,” Kaiser Family Foundation
- “Insurers want to raise Obamacare rates as much as 53 percent,” by Sarah Kliff, Vox
- “Obamacare Choices Could Go From One to Zero in Some Areas,” Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times
- “Amid ACA Uncertainty, Covered California’s Risk Profile Remains Stable,” by John Bertko, Andrew Feher, and Jim Watkins, Health Affairs
- “Senate grapples with looming health care deadline,” by Caitlin Owens, Axios
- “Obamacare Premiums Rise as Insurers Fret Over Law’s Shaky Future,” by Zachary Tracer and Anna Edney, Bloomberg
- “The Trump administration is making Obamacare more expensive,” by Sarah Kliff, Vox
- “Why Blue States Might Ditch Beloved Obamacare Protections,” by Chad Terhune and Barbara Feder Ostrov, Kaiser Health News
- “Insurers Scramble to Price Plans on Health Exchanges as Policy Seesaws,” by Anna Wilde Mathews, WSJ
- “Lots of places have just one Obamacare insurer. What if that falls to zero? Obamacare’s looming “empty shelf” problem,” by Sarah Kliff, Vox
- “Bare Market: What Happens if Places Have No Obamacare Insurers?” by Margot Sanger-Katz
- “JAMA Forum: Is the Affordable Care Act Imploding?” by Larry Levitt, JAMA Forum
- “Obamacare's Insurers Struggle for Stability Amid Trump Threats,” by Zachary Tracer and Anna Edney, Bloomberg
- “Amid growing uncertainty, states extend deadlines to file 2018 rates,” by Shelby Livingston, Modern Healthcare