The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requires that federal and state-based marketplaces verify application information--such as citizenship or immigration status--to determine eligibility for enrollment in a health plan, potentially including a subsidy. However, there is no specific legal requirement to verify the events that trigger a Special Enrollment Period (SEP), which is a

Available survey data show that most enrollees who obtained their coverage through the health insurance exchanges were satisfied overall with their qualified health plans (QHP) during the first few years that exchanges operated, according to five national surveys of QHP enrollees that GAO identified through its literature review. Specifically, most QHP enrollees who obtained their coverage throug

A small percentage of Medicaid-only enrollees--that is, those who were not also eligible for Medicare--consistently accounted for a large percentage of total Medicaid expenditures for Medicaid-only enrollees. In each fiscal year from 2009 through 2011, the most expensive 5 percent of Medicaid-only enrollees accounted for almost half of the expenditures for all Medicaid-only enrollees. In contrast

The number of Medicare prostate cancer-related intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) services performed by self-referring groups increased rapidly, while declining for non-self-referring groups from 2006 to 2010. Over this period, the number of prostate cancer-related IMRT services performed by self-referring groups increased from about 80,000 to 366,000. Consistent with that growth, expen

Several health care and legal factors may make it difficult for consumers to obtain price information for the health care services they receive, particularly estimates of what their complete costs will be. The health care factors include the difficulty of predicting health care services in advance, billing from multiple providers, and the variety of insurance benefit structures. For example, when

CMS has been inconsistent in reviewing states' rate setting for compliance with the Medicaid managed care actuarial soundness requirements, which specify that rates must be developed in accordance with actuarial principles, appropriate for the population and services, and certified by actuaries. Variation in CMS regional office practices contributed to this inconsistency in oversight. For example

Our review found articles that measured the extent of concentration in private health insurance markets or focused on the relationship between competition in these markets and other variables, though the findings of these studies should be interpreted with caution. Several articles identified through our review examined the extent of concentration in private health insurance markets, though this

HRP enrollment--enrollees and their dependents--totaled 199,418 in the 34 HRPs in 2008. We estimated nearly 4 million additional individuals to be potentially eligible for enrollment in an HRP based on their uninsured status and preexisting health conditions. In 2008, the average annual deductible for the most popular plan offered by each of the 34 HRPs was $1,593--almost three times as high as t

About 80 percent of college students aged 18 through 23 had health insurance in 2006. While 67 percent of college students were covered through employer-sponsored plans, 7 percent were covered through other private health insurance plans, such as student insurance plans, and 6 percent were covered by public programs, such as Medicaid. Most insured students were covered, for example, as a dependen

HHS did not adequately ensure that Florida's and Vermont's Medicaid demonstrations will be budget neutral to the federal government before approving them. HHS approved spending limits that were higher than the limits that would have been granted if HHS had held the states to limits based on benchmark growth rates, that is, the lower of the state's historical spending growth or nationwide estimate