Federal Health Care Reform Legislation Establishes Consumer Protections, Health Insurance Exchanges

Health insurance reform legislation.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), enacted on August 21, 1996 (Public Law 104-19), provides for improved access and renewability with respect to employment-related group health plans, to health insurance coverage sold in connection with group plans, and to the individual market (by amending the Public Health Service Act). The Act's provisions include improv...

Consumer subjectivity and U.S. health care reform.

Health care consumerism is an important frame in U.S. health care policy, especially in recent media and policy discourse about federal health care reform. This article reports on qualitative fieldwork with health care users to find out how people interpret and make sense of the identity of "health care consumer." It proposes that while the term consumer is normally understood as a descriptive ...

Health insurance exchanges: legal issues.

Legal Solutions in Health Reform is a project funded by The RobeRT Wood Johnson FoundaTion Prepared for The o'neill insTiTuTe FoR naTional and Global healTh laW aT GeoRGeToWn univeRsiTy 600 new Jersey avenue, nW Washington, dC 20001 is the premier center for health law, scholarship and policy. Housed at Georgetown University Law Center, in the heart of the nation's capital, the Institute has th...

Litigating Federal Health Care Legislation and the Interstices of Procedure,

Health Reform, Health Insurance, and Selection: Estimating Selection into Health Insurance Using the Massachusetts Health Reform.

Approximately 49.9 million people in the United States lack health insurance (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor and Smith (2011)). One potential driver of uninsurance is asymmetric information on health risk between insurers and the insured. Asymmetric information can distort available insurance contracts, as in Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), or it can raise premiums for the relatively healthy, as in Aker...