Qualified health plan

Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post Published 4:37 am PDT, Wednesday, August 1, 2018 WASHINGTON - The Trump administration issued new insurance rules Wednesday morning to encourage more Americans to buy inexpensive, skimpy health plans originally designed for short-term use. The policies, intended to fill brief gaps in coverage, will be available for 12 months at a time, up from a current limit of three, and customers will be able to renew them for additional years. The new rules are the second tool the administration has devised lately to foster low-price insurance that circumvents the Affordable Care Act's coverage requirements and consumer protections. In June, the Labor Department issued rules that will make it easier for small companies to buy a type of insurance known as association health plans and, for the first time, allow them to be sold to people who are self-employed. The pair of new rules carries out an executive order President Donald Trump signed in … [Read more...] about Trump administration widens availability of skimpy, short-term health plans

Zachary Tracer and Emma Ockerman, Bloomberg Published 10:55 am PDT, Tuesday, July 31, 2018 Short-term health plans with a history of consumer complaints will get a larger role in the U.S. insurance market under a Trump administration plan to expand alternatives to Obamacare. The temporary plans, which were originally intended for people between jobs, are allowed to offer coverage that's far skimpier than what the Affordable Care Act requires. The administration has promoted them as a cheaper alternative to Obamacare for individuals who have seen their premiums climb or lost access to doctors. The plans are limited to three months, and President Donald Trump wants to extend that to up to a year. "The status quo is failing too many Americans who face skyrocketing costs and fewer and fewer choices,'' Alex Azar, secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, said when the change was proposed in February. The rule, which is in the final stages of the federal … [Read more...] about Short-term health plans backed by Trump are cheap for a reason

Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post Published 3:13 pm, Monday, July 2, 2018 The number of Americans who bought and began to pay for Affordable Care Act health plans grew slightly this year, despite repeated efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the insurance marketplaces created under the law, new federal figures show. As of February, a month after the start of 2018 coverage, 10.6 million people had paid premiums for ACA health insurance, about 3 percent more than the year before, according to enrollment analyses released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The increase is striking because it happened even though federal health officials last year slashed ACA funding to grass-roots groups that help consumers sign up for coverage, cut advertising and other outreach activities by 90 percent, and shortened the enrollment period by half. The data show that, even though the total number of people choosing a health plan for 2018 dipped, a higher … [Read more...] about More Americans pay for ACA health plans, despite Trump administration moves to undercut the law