4/26/2013 - Eighty-four million people―nearly half of all working-age U.S. adults―went without health insurance for a time last year or had out-of-pocket costs that were so high relative to their income they were considered underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund 2012 Biennial Health Insurance Survey.
3/22/2013 - Health insurance companies reported spending an average of less than 1 percent of the premiums they collected from policyholders in 2011 on activities directly supporting improvement of health care quality, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study.
3/13/2013 - Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have selected the health insurance plan in their state that will serve as the "essential health benefit" package sold by all insurers participating in the new health insurance marketplace and the individual and small-group markets beginning January 2014, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study.
2/1/2013 - Only 11 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or issued regulations to implement the Affordable Care Act’s major health insurance market reforms that go into effect in 2014, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
12/12/2012 - Average premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance plans rose 62 percent between 2003 and 2011, from $9,249 to $15,022 per year, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
12/5/2012 - Consumers saw nearly $1.5 billion in insurer rebates and overhead cost savings in 2011, due to the Affordable Care Act’s medical loss ratio provision requiring health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care or quality improvement activities or pay a rebate to their customers, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
11/1/2012 - Only 49 percent of workers in small businesses with fewer than 50 employees were offered and eligible for health insurance through their employer in 2010, down from 58 percent in 2003. In contrast, 90 percent of workers in firms with 100 or more employees were offered and eligible for health insurance in both 2003 and 2010, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
10/2/2012 - The number of uninsured individuals is estimated to increase in every state and to 72 million nationwide—with children and low- and middle-income Americans particularly hard hit—under Governor Mitt Romney’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with block grants to states for Medicaid and new tax incentives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
9/13/2012 - The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, the name for the federal high-risk health insurance pool established by the Affordable Care Act, is serving its purpose as a bridge program, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
8/29/2012 - The United States lags three other industrialized nations—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—in its potentially preventable death rate, and in the pace of improvement in preventing deaths that could have been avoided with timely and effective health care, according to a Commonwealth Fund–supported study published as a web first online today in Health Affairs.
7/13/2012 - Twenty percent of U.S. women (18.7 million) ages 19-64 were uninsured in 2010, up from 15 percent (12.8 million) in 2000, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report on women's health care. An additional 16.7 million women were underinsured in 2010, compared with 10.3 million in 2003. The report estimates that once fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will cover nearly all women, reducing the uninsured rate among women from 20 percent to 8 percent.
6/8/2012 - In 2011, 13.7 million young adults ages 19 to 25 stayed on or joined their parents' health plans, including 6.6 million who would likely not have been able to do so before passage of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.
5/23/2012 - More than half of Americans with individual market health insurance coverage in 2010 were enrolled in so-called "tin" plans, which provide less coverage than the lowest "bronze"-level plans in the Affordable Care Act, and therefore would not be able to be offered in the health insurance exchanges that are being created under the law.
4/19/2012 - One of four working-age U.S. adults experienced a gap in health insurance coverage during 2011, often because they lost or changed jobs, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report that also shows how difficult it is for people to regain health insurance on their own after losing employer-sponsored coverage.
4/5/2012 - Consumers nationwide would have received an estimated $2 billion in rebates from health insurers if the new medical loss ratio (MLR) rules enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act had been in effect in 2010, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund.