States Revisit Insurer Benefit Requirements
<p>The Affordable Care Act’s standards for “essential health benefits” are intended to ensure that health plans meet the coverage needs of individuals and small businesses. In a new blog post, Justin Giovannelli and colleagues at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute's Center on Health Insurance Reforms explain that most states are continuing to define their essential benefits much as they had originally—despite the opportunity to revisit this decision for 2017 and beyond.</p><p>The authors point out it’s difficult for policymakers to know if the essential benefits policy is working, because there is little data available from insurers about enrollees’s experiences accessing needed care.</p>
<p>“Regulators want and need a more complete sense of how essential health benefits policy is working,” they write. “They should use the disclosure tools available to them to find out.”</p>