Health News
FamiliesUSA Sheds Light on the ACA
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the health care reform it brings can be difficult to understand. FamiliesUSA has recently made it a bit easier to understand by making available two different resources.
In a partnership with Herndon Alliance and Anzalone Liszt Research, FamiliesUSA started conducting research to identify the most frequent questions surrounding the ACA. The project began by polling state advocates across the country to find out the most often asked, but also most difficult to answer, questions. The result is a series of Q&A?s that help to de-mystify these common questions. The 10-page document, entitled ?Mastering the 30-Second Sound Byte,? offers up straightforward, comprehensive information. In an effort to pass on some of that information to you, our readers, Illinois Health Matters will be posting a series of summaries from the document.
One of the Families USA Q&A?s sheds light on the claim that the ACA does not cut health care costs sufficiently. The answer explains that the ACA does put emphasis on providing good, quality care to citizens, but that it also employs cost-saving measures that do not detract from that quality, for both citizens and those funding health care. One element to this is the free preventative care that the ACA guarantees. Although there will be costs to insurance companies in order to pay for the preventative care in the short term, in the long run, it will end up saving costs from hospital visits and medical care for health conditions that will be detected and treating conditions before they grow serious enough to require more expensive treatment. Thus, both the consumer and the insurance companies are able to save money and still receive and provide quality care. A different step, on the administrative side, is to weed out fraud and abuse from Medicare.
A primary way that costs will be reduced for the consumer is through the health care exchange, a competitive health care marketplace that will be created in each state. The marketplaces will work to allow consumers to easily compare and find the best plan, while providing a competitive incentive for insurance companies to keep costs down. As the FamiliesUSA document describes it, it?s like ?comparing airfare at a travel website like Travelocity.?
Finally, long-term efforts to lower costs and to increase quality of care turn towards innovation and ingenuity. The ACA will draw on new ideas from policy specialists that are as of yet untested, and to set up trials in order to see if these ideas will actually operate effectively. If the ideas are successful in test trials, they will be implemented widely in efforts to improve health care for all?without increasing costs!
Annika Yates
Illinois Health Matters
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Health News
?What does the Affordable Care Act mean for me??
FamiliesUSA Sheds Light on the ACA
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the health care reform it brings can be difficult to understand. FamiliesUSA has recently made it a bit easier to understand by making available two different resources.
In a partnership with Herndon Alliance and Anzalone Liszt Research, FamiliesUSA started conducting research to identify the most frequent questions surrounding the ACA. The project began by polling state advocates across the country to find out the most often asked, but also most difficult to answer, questions. The result is a series of Q&A?s that help to de-mystify these common questions. The 10-page document, entitled ?Mastering the 30-Second Sound Byte,? offers up straightforward, comprehensive information. In an effort to pass on some of that information to you, our readers, Illinois Health Matters will be posting a series of summaries from the document.
One of the Families USA Q&A?s sheds light on the claim that the ACA does not cut health care costs sufficiently. The answer explains that the ACA does put emphasis on providing good, quality care to citizens, but that it also employs cost-saving measures that do not detract from that quality, for both citizens and those funding health care. One element to this is the free preventative care that the ACA guarantees. Although there will be costs to insurance companies in order to pay for the preventative care in the short term, in the long run, it will end up saving costs from hospital visits and medical care for health conditions that will be detected and treating conditions before they grow serious enough to require more expensive treatment. Thus, both the consumer and the insurance companies are able to save money and still receive and provide quality care. A different step, on the administrative side, is to weed out fraud and abuse from Medicare.
A primary way that costs will be reduced for the consumer is through the health care exchange, a competitive health care marketplace that will be created in each state. The marketplaces will work to allow consumers to easily compare and find the best plan, while providing a competitive incentive for insurance companies to keep costs down. As the FamiliesUSA document describes it, it?s like ?comparing airfare at a travel website like Travelocity.?
Finally, long-term efforts to lower costs and to increase quality of care turn towards innovation and ingenuity. The ACA will draw on new ideas from policy specialists that are as of yet untested, and to set up trials in order to see if these ideas will actually operate effectively. If the ideas are successful in test trials, they will be implemented widely in efforts to improve health care for all?without increasing costs!
Annika Yates
Illinois Health Matters
- Provider-plan-payer Alliance For Health - Your Input Is Needed
Illinois was recently awarded a Model Design grant from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovations (CMMI) for the development of a State Health Care Innovation Plan. Through these grants, CMMI is encouraging states to develop multi-payer approaches...
- What Is The Illinois Partnership Health Insurance Marketplace?
The Affordable Care Act requires each state to have a health insurance marketplace (otherwise known as a "health insurance exchange"). Originally, the plan was for each state to establish its own health insurance marketplace, or default to a federally-run...
- Acos: Health Care?s Big Project
Medicare beneficiaries who are patients of 32 groups of health care providers have started to receive letters informing them that they are now patients of an Accountable Care Organization, or ACO. ACOs are the focus of a new Medicare demonstration project...
- Effective Exchange Key To Lower Health Insurance Costs For Illinois Families
It?s hard not to notice the out-of-control health insurance cost increases in recent years. Three out of every four individual-market policyholders saw a premium increase from early 2009 to early 2010. Small businesses are particularly hard hit....
- America?s Health Care Law: Providing Security And Opportunity For All
It's been a year since the historic vote that made the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a law, putting America on the path towards a system of quality, affordable health care for all. We have a lot to celebrate as we continue to implement and enforce our...