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    Growing Support for Medical Debt Forgiveness

    September 6, 2024
    Medical debt is a significant issue in the United States, affecting millions of Americans. Recent data shows strong public support for forgiving medical debt, particularly for those facing substantial financial hardships. According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago, a majority of Americans favor medical debt forgiveness under certain circumstances, such as when individuals are wrongfully billed or have debt that is large relative to their income. Because this issue has broad interest, it’s important to be aware of the facts when customers ask.
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    Insulin Price Cap: A Step Forward for People with Diabetes

    April 28, 2023
    There’s been a LOT of information in the news recently about the cost of insulin. And while this is obviously important and of interest to your diabetic clients, it can be difficult to keep it all straight – what changes have merely been proposed and which ones have actually passed? As agents, it’s important to stay informed about these changes so we can answer our clients’ questions and let them know what to expect.
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    How Medical Debt Reforms Could Affect Your Clients

    April 7, 2023
    Medical debt is an issue that affects millions of Americans, leaving many with damaged credit scores and financial instability. Importantly, this is not a problem limited to the uninsured. With today's high cost-sharing amounts on most of the plans we sell, even consumers with health insurance coverage can find themselves facing thousands of dollars in medical debt.
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    What you need to know about Form 1095A

    March 24, 2023
    It’s tax time, so you may be receiving calls from your individual clients asking how they can obtain their form 1095-A and what they should do with it once they receive it. We’ve prepared a short Q&A to help you answer their questions. This information is also available on the Healthcare.gov website: https://www.healthcare.gov/tax-form-1095/
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    Medical Debt Remains a Big Issue for Consumers

    September 2, 2022
    In 2019, the American Journal of Public Health published the results of an analysis about bankruptcies in the United States and concluded that medical bankruptcy is still common despite the Affordable Care Act: “Despite gains in coverage and access to care from the ACA, our findings suggest that it did not change the proportion of bankruptcies with medical causes.”
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    High Cost-Sharing Causes Some to Forego Needed Healthcare

    August 20, 2021
    We spend a lot of time talking about the uninsured problem in this country. For a variety of reasons, including 1) high health insurance premiums, 2) confusion about eligibility for financial assistance, and 3) a failure to prioritize health care coverage, millions of Americans remain uninsured.
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    The No Surprises Act

    April 9, 2021
    Everybody likes surprises, right? Wrong! Obviously, there are a lot of good surprises in life, but when the surprise involves bad news, it’s not nearly as fun. Take a surprise medical bill, for instance. When a health plan member does everything he or she can to follow the rules, like visiting in-network facilities and getting any required pre-authorizations before a procedure, it’s easy to see why the member would be unhappy when a “surprise bill” shows up in the mail.
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    The Way People Get Care is Changing

    December 31, 2020
    The United States, as we’ve long been told, has the best health care system in the world. We have the best technology, top-notch medical providers, live-saving prescription drugs, and a free-market system that encourages innovation.
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    Health Insurance: Fixed vs. Variable Costs

    November 20, 2020
    A lot of agents are good at analyzing a client’s options, doing the math, and then recommending a plan that will save the client the most money. After all, that is a big part of the agent’s job: to provide analysis and advice to the client.
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    Upcoming Executive Order on Price Transparency

    June 6, 2019
    In a recent AHCP blog post, we explained that a hospital price transparency law that went into effect January 1 of this year really does very little to help consumers better understand the cost of medical care. Instead, it simply requires hospitals to post their chargemaster data in a machine-readable format on its website. We finished the post by saying that “only time will tell how impactful this particular rule will be, but the movement towards transparency is a step in the right direction.”
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