There have been many stories in the news about plan cancellations and President Obama’s recent announcement that insurers will have the opportunity to continue selling plans they otherwise would have cancelled. While some have celebrated the President’s announcement, plan cancellations really mean that 7 million to 10 million people can now purchase better insurance plans. Plan cancellations are an indication that the weak standards of the individual health insurance market are finally getting fixed.

So did President Obama break his promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it”? Not really. Back in 2010, insurers were allowed to keep plans that they wanted to have “grandfather status,” or carry over into the 2014 Marketplace. To keep their grandfathered status, insurers were not allowed to alter plans’ benefits or cost sharing greatly. Some plans are currently being cancelled because in 2010, insurers decided they wanted to raise premiums or reduce benefits on existing plans, or create new plans that did not meet the grandfathered rules. If the insurer changed a plan or if a consumer changed plans, this broke the grandfather status of the pre-2010 plan. When Obama said, “If you like your plan you can keep it,” this meant only if insurers choose to keep offering it.

Prior to the ACA, many consumers who signed up for coverage in the individual market thought they would be protected from high bills if they got sick or hurt. However, that was often not the case. Many of the people who were enrolled in these plans were underinsured and wouldn’t know it until something catastrophic happened and their insurance did not provide the safety net they expected. Insurers were allowed to discontinue plans, raise premiums, or cut benefits when they chose, and they could do so based on the health status of their enrollees.

Under the ACA, the individual market is finally seeing a new day. Plans are required to cover 10 areas of essential health benefits, which means they can’t skimp on coverage like maternity care or chronic disease management. Plans also cannot discriminate based on gender or pre-existing conditions, and prices prorated with age are greatly limited. People who have received plan cancellation notices can go to the Marketplace where many will find a lower-cost plan. Through the Marketplace many of those people will receive financial assistance through federal tax credits, and will get higher value for their premium dollars.

However, the issues with the Healthcare.gov portal have made it difficult for those who have had their policies cancelled to enroll in new and, usually, cheaper and better plans through the Marketplace. Because people had a hard time understanding the plan changes and accessing options, the plan cancellation issue gained traction. In response to this, President Obama recently announced consumers can renew these cancelled plans for 2014. President Obama’s ruling leaves it up to state departments of insurance to decide whether to allow insurers to keep offering non-ACA-compliant plans. Insurers can also decide whether they will continue to offer the old plans or not. President Obama’s rule gives consumers another option in the individual market—to keep their existing plan. Importantly, it also requires insurers to tell consumers the difference in benefits between their current plan and the ones offered on the Marketplace. This transparency shows consumers the risks of where their current plans fall short.

Despite this change, the best coverage option for most consumers is still to shop for a plan in the Marketplace, since these plans are higher value and may be more affordable. Importantly, consumers who stick with their existing plans will not be eligible for tax credits to lower the cost of premiums or for cost-sharing assistance.

The future of this issue is untold: If Healthcare.gov technology issues are not resolved soon, consumers whose plans have been cancelled face obstacles to enrollment in new plans on the Marketplace. If not, this issue may continue to see interest in Congress where there are currently a number of bills moving. A bill introduced by Congressman Upton (R-MI) allows insurers to keep selling plans that are not compliant with ACA regulations and allows any plan insurers sell to satisfy the individual mandate requirement. Senator Udall (D-CO) has introduced a bill that would allow people in the individual insurance market to keep their current plan for up to two more years.

People in the individual market now have more options: they can keep their current plan, if their insurer chooses to continue to offer it, or choose from better options on the Marketplace. Either way, information is a consumer’s strongest weapon. You wouldn’t buy auto insurance that doesn’t cover accidents, so why buy insurance that doesn’t cover all your medical needs?

-- Sarah Gordon, Private Insurance Intern

Recently, Community Catalyst’s Voices for Better Health program released a new video featuring the story of a mother and daughter – Sally and Edna – whose lives have been dramatically improved in the last few years. These improvements came about after Sally enrolled in an integrated care system – Commonwealth Care Alliance – which provided her with care designed especially for frail older adults.

These models of care emerged from the hard work of geriatrics researchers and practitioners, many of whom have been supported over the past two decades by the John A. Hartford Foundation. This dynamic group of Hartford Foundation grantees, with expertise in geriatric medicine, nursing and social work, has developed an expanding knowledge base that is critical to how our health care system treats the growing number of older patients. Now the Hartford Foundation is putting this knowledge to work at the practice, delivery and policy levels. Recognizing that we desperately need health care institutions and systems that deliver better outcomes and manage costs effectively, the foundation has just launched the Change AGEnts Initiative. This initiative is an interdisciplinary effort to leverage the Foundation’s powerful network, help its scholars and grantees learn from and support one another, and work directly on changes in practice and service delivery that improve the health of older Americans. The Hartford Foundation has awarded a multi-year $5 million grant to the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) to launch and develop the Change AGEnts Initiative.

The Initiative will have two main components. First, the Change AGEnts community will provide Hartford Foundation scholars, fellows, mentors, advisors and grantees with support and training to mobilize for action. Second, the Change AGEnts networks – small, interdisciplinary groups – will focus on specific areas of vital health care concerns. The first two such networks are focused on caregiving for people with dementia, and patient-centered medical homes.

Community Catalyst’s Voices for Better Health program fits closely with the aims of the Change AGEnts Initiative, as the program is working to improve the lives of older adults with both Medicare and Medicaid, sometimes referred to as “dual eligibles.” A recent grant from the Hartford Foundation to Voices for Better Health enables us to mobilize geriatrics health care leaders who will work closely with consumer advocates, shaping the development of new integrated care systems serving dual eligibles and infusing them with geriatrics know-how and best practices. The diverse and expert group of professionals joining the Change AGEnts Initiative is ready-made for this work, and we look forward to working with many of them in the months and years to come.

Congratulations to the good folks at the Hartford Foundation on the launch of this exciting new initiative. We are proud to be adding our “Voices” to the mission of the Change AGEnts!

~ Renée Markus Hodin, Program Director, Voices for Better Health  

Employment and income are among the social and economic factors that impact individual and community health. Studies have linked unemployment to shortened lifespans, increased mental health problems, and other health issues. But we don’t need studies to tell us what is obvious – having a steady job means having a steady income and perhaps benefits like health insurance, which mean better health for individuals and families. Finding solutions to chronic unemployment is one way to improve the health of communities.

A big contributor to chronic unemployment is a history of incarceration. Job applicants who have been imprisoned are usually screened out by questions about criminal history on the initial application, no matter how long ago their incarceration occurred, and whether or not the crime committed has any relevance to the available job. Because African Americans and Latinos are arrested, convicted and incarcerated at higher rates than white people, employment practices that discriminate against ex-offenders contribute to the nation’s racial jobs disparity – the disparity in employment between white people and people of color. In the United States, the unemployment rate for African Americans is double the unemployment rate for white people, and for Latinos the unemployment rate is about 50 percent higher than it is for whites. Disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos significantly contributes to these higher unemployment rates.

Nowhere is the racial jobs disparity starker than in Minnesota, which has the highest racial jobs gap in the United States. The Twin Cities has the biggest racial jobs gap of any metropolitan region in the nation, with African-Americans three times more likely to be unemployed than whites, regardless of income and education. The TakeAction Minnesota Education Fund, an organization committed to social, racial, and economic justice, is tackling this jobs disparity head on.

Through the Roadmaps to Health Community Grant Program, the TakeAction Minnesota Education Fund led a campaign for “Ban the Box” policies, which would prevent employers from asking job applicants about their criminal backgrounds on an initial employment application. Asking applicants about their criminal records, which is standard among employers in all but three states, significantly contributes to the high unemployment rate among people who have been in prison. TakeAction was successful in 2013 in passing statewide Ban the Box legislation, and since then they have been working to convince Minnesota employers to voluntarily comply with the law. Working with business prior to the law taking effect on January 1 may help avoid enforcement problems when the law does take effect. In particular TakeAction’s sites have been set on the Target Corporation, a Minnesota-grown company and the nation’s second largest retailer.

Even before the Ban the Box legislation passed, TakeAction worked for three years to convince Target to take leadership on providing fair employment opportunities to people who had been incarcerated.  TakeAction has mobilized formerly incarcerated community members affected by chronic unemployment and used a variety of tactics, including protests at Target’s corporate headquarters, shareholder activism, and filing legal complaints against the company. All of their efforts to pass Ban the Box legislation and to engage Target were led by ex-offenders who have struggled for years to find work. TakeAction trained ex-offenders to become effective advocates, to tell their stories in a way that moved policymakers, business executives, and the public.

After the Ban the Box law was signed earlier this year, TakeAction also began to talk directly with top Target executives. On October 24, 2013 before an overflowing room of 400 people, TakeAction’s efforts bore real fruit. The Target Corporation committed to financially supporting a free legal clinic for people with criminal histories and to supporting hiring practices that remove barriers to employment. Most significantly, Target agreed to remove the criminal history box from its job applications – across the United States! 

TakeAction’s approach is an excellent example of how a campaign led by those directly impacted can create meaningful change on first the state and then the national level on an issue like employment. Congratulations to TakeAction Minnesota on this important national victory! 

Community Catalyst manages the Roadmaps to Health Community Grants program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program is an important component of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program and supports two-year state and local efforts among local coalitions of community organizations, policymakers, business, education, health care, and public health professionals who are working to create positive policy changes that address the social and economic factors that impact the health of people in their community.

Earlier this month, Community Catalyst joined other national organizations calling on the Obama administration to change the direction of economic treaty negotiations that could impact cost containment by federal and state health programs. A letter by AFSCME, AARP, the Alliance for Retired Americans, Consumers Union, Community Catalyst, and several other national U.S. health, consumer and legal advocacy organizations warned that current negotiations between the U.S. and 11 pacific rim nations could end up imposing restrictions on efforts by Medicaid and other federal health programs to control future health care costs on prescription drugs.  For instance, the provisions could allow drug makers to bring legal challenges to state Medicaid program efforts to control costs through negotiated rebates or exclusions of wasteful drugs from their formulary, among other things. Both the Affordable Care Act’s price discounts for seniors in the donut hole and the “340B” program, which provides discounts on drugs provided through hospitals and health centers that work with underserved populations, could also be at risk.

In light of the potential impacts, these groups also called for increased transparency in negotiations because the current treaty “proposals are developed in close and formal consultation with the pharmaceutical and medical device industries,” but the current “process excludes health care advocates and the broader public.”

The Obama Administration faced even more criticism a week later, when documents appeared on Wiki-Leaks suggesting, as one consumer advocate and long-time critic of these trade negotiations put it, the US negotiators are “standing in the shoes of big pharma” to push for increased protections for industry. Some critics responded that the current administration has “backtracked on even the modest health considerations adopted under the Bush administration.”

For more information, here are comments by Citizen Action, HCAN, and Médecins Sans Frontières, Knowledge Ecology International.

Leaders in Congress have also publicly raised the concern that these negotiations are proceeding without “broader and deeper consultations with members of the full range of committees of Congress whose jurisdiction touches on the numerous issues being negotiated.” More than 150 House Democrats, led by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and George Miller (D-CA), signed a letterto President Obama expressing "serious concern" about the fast-tracking of the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty negotiations, and the lack of congressional input.

On Monday, Politico came out with a story about how Speaker John Boehner and his wife were going to have to pay higher costs as a result of the Affordable Care Act. It’s worth taking a minute to think through why that is and what, if anything, the Speaker’s situation tells us about the ACA as a whole. (Short answer: not much.)

First, let’s not forget the requirement that members of Congress and certain Hill staffers transition out of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) and into the ACA Marketplaces was a Republican amendment. Secondly, the reason Speaker Boehner’s premiums are going up is that the FEHBP is community rated (as is typical for employer-sponsored insurance) while the ACA allows insurers to charge older enrollees three times as much as younger enrollees (a 3:1 “age band”). Since Mr. Boehner is in the oldest eligible age group (pre-Medicare), he is feeling the effect of this age rating. 

According to the Speaker’s office, the Boehners’ situation is emblematic of problems with the ACA, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Members of Congress are in an unusual situation. Most employees who have ESI do not pay higher premiums based on their age. The fact that older federal employees are being forced to pay more is really a function of the refusal of Congressional ACA opponents to allow any fixes to the law such as allowing FEHBP to make age-adjusted payments in order to protect older employees.  

Most adults in the their 50s and 60s who shop on the Marketplaces will find that the same 3:1 age band policy that is pushing Speaker Boehner’s premiums up will be holding theirs down. Moreover, since older adults are more likely to have a pre-existing medical condition or to incur significant medical expenses during the year, the ACA’s insurance market reforms and out-of-pocket limits will benefit them even if they don’t qualify for premium tax credits. Repealing the ACA, as Mr. Boehner remains intent on doing, would leave these people paying higher premiums for inadequate coverage.

Although the Speaker’s situation doesn’t tell us anything about how the ACA will affect most people, it does tell us something about the ACA’s critics, who appear to be willing to attack the law both for compressing rates too much and not enough. While that may seem illogical, it does have its own kind of (twisted) consistency.