Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
HHS To Launch National Ad Campaign Encouraging Health Plan Enrollment
The Obama administration on Thursday said that it would wage a national advertising campaign to counter a perception among people with low incomes that health insurance under the Affordable Care Act was not affordable. (Pear, 10/29)
Federal health officials are targeting low-income consumers with new advertisements unveiled Thursday that emphasize the affordability of health insurance, two days after new data showed the average increase in premiums was higher than for 2015 plans. In a meeting with reporters, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell emphasized that about 80% of consumers shopping on the federal Healthcare.gov exchange that serves 38 states are eligible for tax credits that lower their premiums to less than $100 a month. (O'Donnell, 10/29)
The insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act are scheduled to open for a third sign-up season Sunday, with the Obama administration setting modest enrollment expectations and focusing its energies on a niche of people who remain uninsured. The impending open-enrollment will be devoid of the movie stars and basketball heroes who served as White House megaphones two years ago, when the online marketplaces debuted. (Goldstein, 10/29)
On fishing piers in Maine, inside public libraries in rural Iowa and at insurer-run retail stores in Minnesota, the hunt for uninsured Americans will reignite Sunday when Obamacare鈥檚 third open enrollment season starts. But the job will be more difficult this time as the number of uninsured Americans has fallen dramatically. (Galewitz, 10/30)
Ten million people still don't have health insurance two years after the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Some never bought a policy. But 20 percent went to the trouble of signing up on HealthCare.gov, or one of the state insurance exchanges, and even made payments. Then, those 2 million people let their insurance lapse. NPR asked visitors to our Facebook page to tell us why. (Kodjak, 10/30)
Insurance companies still see a good market in the health law exchanges.
Slipping enrollment and struggling competitors have done little to shake the faith that the nation鈥檚 biggest health insurers have placed in the Affordable Care Act鈥檚 public insurance exchanges. Aetna executives said Thursday that the exchanges, a key element in the overhaul鈥檚 push to cover millions of uninsured people, remain a good market, even though the insurer鈥檚 enrollment in them fell 11 percent to about 814,000 people in the third quarter. Leaders of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Anthem have voiced a similar sentiment, and UnitedHealth said earlier this month that it will expand into 11 more exchanges next year. (Murphy, 10/29)
