Just a few days are left before the deadline for sign-ups in the 2019 health insurance exchange. Yet as of Dec. 8, the number of Georgians who had enrolled in the health insurance exchange was less than half of last year’s total sign-up figure, federal health officials report. Through this past Saturday, 233,584 Georgians had…
All of the political campaign talk on health care may have obscured the reality that starting Thursday, the health insurance exchange opens for business. Open enrollment for Georgia’s 2019 exchange, which operates under the Affordable Care Act, runs from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15. The coverage rules will feature a significant change: People who previously…
Low-income adults in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid are more likely to have unmet medical needs than the poor in states that expanded the government-run program, a federal report says. The report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released Monday, based its estimates from a 2016 national survey. An estimated 5.6 million uninsured low-income adults…
The potential impact from Medicaid expansion would be bigger in rural Georgia than in urban areas of the state, according to a new report released Tuesday. Medicaid expansion would benefit low-income people across the state, said the report, by Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Project….
Georgia’s uninsured rate ticked up slightly, to 13.4 percent, in 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau reported this week. That’s the fourth-highest rate in the nation. The state trails only Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska. The uninsured rate in Georgia was 12.9 percent in 2016. Nationally, 8.8 percent of people, or 28.5 million, did not have health insurance…
A small DeKalb County nonprofit has been given a statewide grant to provide navigators for people seeking to enroll in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges. Navigators are people specially trained to advise and assist consumers who use the exchanges to buy health coverage. Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health, based in Clarkston, will get…
Two of the four health insurers in the 2019 Georgia insurance exchange, in a surprising move, are set to make reductions in monthly premiums from the rates they offer this year. Such decreases in insurance rates rarely occur in health care. The overall premiums announced Thursday, as approved by the state insurance commissioner, show the relative…
Fewer benefits. Riskier coverage. Buyer beware. The Trump administration issued a final rule Wednesday that promotes the sale of more “short-term’’ health plans, but the move immediately drew criticism from consumer advocates and health care industry organizations. The short-term plans don’t have to cover pre-existing conditions and can provide a limited range of benefits. Many such plans…
The insurance exchange in Georgia and other states just got an injection of stability. And that’s good news for people buying individual or family coverage for next year. The Trump administration announced late Tuesday that it’s restoring the Affordable Care Act payments to insurers that it froze earlier this month. Those risk-adjustment payments were worth about $10.4…
The White House is again slashing funds for the “navigators’’ who help enroll people in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges. The cuts will almost certainly reduce the in-person assistance provided to Georgians seeking an exchange health plan for next year. Macon-based Community Health Works, which oversees a navigator program in the state, said Wednesday…