Empowering patient voices through voter registration
While roughly 83% of adults in the United States will visit a health care provider in the next year, an estimated
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12-9-10 Affordable Care Act Update
December 13, 2010
Below is this week’s update on the Affordable Care Act. As always, thank you for all you do every day to support laws and policies that help cancer patients and their families.
New ACS CAN Evaluative Framework
The ACS CAN Policy Team recently developed the “ACS CAN Evaluative Framework for Assessing the Small Business Health Insurance Options Program (SHOP) and Health Benefits Exchange Proposals.” This document covers important questions that may arise as proposals for health benefit exchanges are being developed and debated across the country on the state level.
Questions are organized by six criteria: availability, affordability, adequacy of coverage, administrative simplicity, governance, and financing. The criteria were designed to illustrate the kinds of inquiries and analyses that should be considered in determining whether ACS CAN should take a position on a state health exchange proposal. The Exchange Evaluative Framework can be found at www.fightcancer.org/healthcare/learn.
New Study Finds Consumers Spending More of Income on Health Insurance
The percentage of Americans’ income devoted to health insurance grew significantly between 2003 and 2009, according to a state-by-state analysis by The Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan research foundation. In 2003, families in only three states were paying 20 percent or more of their median household income for deductibles and premiums. In 2009, that number rose to 15 states.
The study also found that the average premium for family coverage would increase by 79 percent -– from $13,027 to $23,342 –- by 2020 if premiums for employer-sponsored health plans in each state continue to grow at the same average annual rate seen from 2003 to 2009. Read the following CQ article for more about the report.
State Government Relations Directors Training
This week, ACS CAN brought together Division state government relations directors from
across the country for a day-and-a-half training in Washington, DC on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on states. ACS CAN staff helped front-line Division staff learn about critical elements of the law, and focused primarily on the work that will need to be done over the next few years to develop the health benefit exchanges –- commonly known as the state exchanges. In addition, the nearly 100 participants received important information about Medicaid and its role in the overall implementation of the law in 2011 and beyond.
The training was enormously successful, fostering a detailed discussion about some of the issues that Division advocacy staff can expect to confront when states begin formulating what the health benefit exchanges will look like. We look forward to continuing our communications with you and your colleagues about implementation of important provisions in the new health care law that benefit cancer patients and their families.
Christopher W. Hansen
President
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN)