Health Policy Commons^™

How Will We Heal?, William H. Lane

English Faculty Publications

How will we ever heal from our recent election? Isn't that what many Americans are asking at this point in time? Deadlines being what they have to be in order to keep a lively small town paper on track. I pose these questions while writing on Halloween Eve--appropriately enough given the current state of our politics--without knowing the results of the election. I don't know who won what exactly, but I do know our country lost, having been seriously damaged over the last year and a half by a presidential campaign without precedent in American history, and I do know …

Health Insurance Co-Ops: Product Availability And Premiums In Rural Counties, Erika C. Ziller Phd, Zachariah T. Croll Ba, Andrew F. Coburn Phd

Access / Insurance

Created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) are private, non-profit health insurers that were designed to increase insurance plan choice and lower premiums in the Health Insurance Marketplaces. Early analyses of the ACA suggested that CO-OPs may be particularly beneficial for rural communities, where fewer individual and small group health insurance options have traditionally been available.

This Research and Policy Brief, authored by research staff at the Maine Rural Health Research Center, explores the early availability and role of CO-OPs in rural and urban counties. We describe the regional distribution and market prevalence of …

Economic Windfalls And The Affordable Care Act: A Policy Proposal, Joshua Congdon-Hohman, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

This paper identifies a major issue with windfall payments under either possible interpretation of the ACA as it currently stands. Several alternatives are proposed that would eliminate the windfalls. We advocate the establishment of a tort award funded “Federal Stabilization Fund” to improve the economic efficiency of future health care awards in the age of the Affordable Care Act