Insurance Market Reform

This guide focuses on the private insurance reforms of the Affordable Care Act, including the health insurance marketplaces, rating, benefit and cost standards, and premium tax credits. It is intended to supplement the Navigator training available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This comprehensive resource addresses more than 230 enrollment questions about private insurance reforms, and is divided into four sections: individuals with no coverage; individuals who currently have coverage or an offer of coverage from their employer; coverage for small business employers; and post-enrollment issues.

States, whether or not they have decided to operate their own health insurance marketplaces, must navigate rapidly changing health insurance markets in which the ACA’s reforms are affecting insurers, businesses, and consumers. Under the ACA, states are primarily responsible for implementing significant insurance reforms that went into effect on January 1, 2014. This paper explores the responses of eight states to the ACA’s new rules and the creation of the new health insurance marketplaces.

Concern about even modest disruption of existing health insurance coverage by the ACA regenerates the belief that "there's got to be a better way" to make coverage available, adequate and affordable. But this brief shows that disruption is inevitable in any health reform and that the ACA's disruption is remarkably limited—far less than single payer proposals on the left or market-based proposals on the right. Further, unlike even many narrowly targeted reform alternatives, the ACA improves the pooling of risk that is essential to effective insurance.

The new health insurance marketplaces aim to improve consumers’ purchasing experiences by setting uniform coverage levels for health plans and giving them tools to explore their options. Marketplace administrators may choose to limit the number and type of plans offered to further simplify consumer decision-making. This issue brief examines the policies set by some state-based marketplaces to simplify plan choices: adopting a meaningful difference standard, limiting the number of plans or benefit designs insurers may offer, or requiring standardized benefit designs.

Part of states' roles in administering the new health insurance marketplaces is to certify the health plans available for purchase. This analysis focuses on how state-based and state partnership marketplaces are using their flexibility in setting certification standards to shape plan design in the individual market. It focuses on three aspects of certification: provider networks; inclusion of essential community providers; and benefit substitution, which allows plans to offer benefits that differ from a state’s benchmark plan.