“One of the things that surprises me is … how different insurers are handling this,” says Josh Fangmeier, CHRT’s health policy analyst, following news that more than a dozen insurers must reimburse Michigan consumers a total of $13.1 million. The unanticipated checks—ranging from $31 to $403 or more in Michigan—stem from the Affordable Care Act’s 80/20 rule, which limits how much insurers can spend on non-health care related costs like overhead or profits.

“I think it’s important to understand that this isn’t the last word,” CHRT Director Marianne Udow-Phillips tells the Detroit Free Press following a pair of contradictory court decisions that jeopardize millions of dollars in tax credits for nearly a quarter-million Michiganders.

In this guest column, CHRT Director Marianne Udow-Phillips and Dr. Theodore Iwashyna, a 2013 CHRT Policy Fellow, call on Michigan to become a leader in preventing severe sepsis, an overwhelming infection that causes more deaths than prostate cancer and breast cancer combined.

As open enrollment on the insurance marketplace winds down, the Detroit Free Press discusses penalties facing some of those who remain uninsured, citing CHRT figures on penalty costs.

CHRT Health Policy Analyst Josh Fangmeier and Claire McAndrew, director of the private insurance program at Washington, D.C.-based Families USA, answer health care reform questions from Free Press readers.

CHRT Health Policy Analyst Josh Fangmeier and Paul Duguay, deputy director of the Lansing-based Michigan Association of Health Plans, answer health reform questions from Detroit Free Press readers.

CHRT Health Policy Analyst Josh Fangmeier explains what consumers buying coverage through the Michigan Health Insurance Exchange should consider to avoid costly surprises later in the year.

Following the annoucement that the $6.6-billion mega merger between Henry Ford and Beaumont health systems is now off, CHRT Director Marianne Udow-Phillips offers her perspective on contributing factors to the failed merger.

CHRT Director Marianne Udow-Phillips puts Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s new reimbursement contract with Trinity Health’s 12 Michigan hospitals in context, explaining that “this is still a fee-for-service payment, but it adds incentives for quality.”