Center in the News

What Republicans such as Trump or DeSantis might try to do with the ACA remains to be seen. A repeal of the law could have far-reaching effects.

"About 55 million Americans would suddenly be uninsured, and insurance companies would once again be allowed to deny health insurance, or charge substantially higher premiums, to anyone with a pre-existing condition," said Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "This may be the world ideologues want us to live in, but it would be a public health disaster."

More than 75,000 unionized Kaiser Permanente employees are returning to work after a historic three-day strike. But an even bigger, longer work stoppage could be just around the corner ... Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, said he believes the health care industry and its workers have yet to rebound from the pandemic.

“The fact that there’s burnout and problems with retention and recruiting because of the work environment is, in my opinion, probably one of the longer-term consequences of the pandemic,” he said.

"'If you join Kaiser Permanente, you are saying, "I'm going to see Kaiser doctors, and I'm going to Kaiser hospitals,'" said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research."

The disputes that go public are the tip of the iceberg," said Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "Companies tend to only make these disagreements public if they're trying to put pressure on insurance companies," he added. "The fact that Carbon is a startup is maybe why they're in this position," he said."Their relative power, there's not symmetry here in terms of power in the two sides negotiating.

The ACA “did close a lot of gaps” says Gerald Kominski, PhD, senior fellow at UCLA CHPR and research professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Luskin School of Public Affairs. “But we still have upward of roughly 25 million Americans without health insurance, and no other industrial, high-income nation can say that such a large portion of the population remains outside’’ the system.

“This is a stupid lie that apparently, like a zombie, refuses to die,” Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow and former director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, wrote in an email. “The most common lie about this fact is that every COVID hospitalization (i.e., including on-Medicare) meant more payment (FALSE) and hospitals only got paid more if the patient died (FALSE)."

Most employers, particularly larger companies, typically subsidize about 80 percent of the total premium, meaning that you will go from paying about 20 percent to paying about 102 percent of the cost, once you factor in the 2 percent administrative fee, said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Two separate studies by UCLA CHPR researchers have been recognized among the top 10 articles in 2021 by the scientific journal Health Affairs:

The Effect Of The Affordable Care Act On Cancer Detection Among The Near-Elderly by Fabian Duarte, Srikanth Kadiyala, Gerald F. Kominski, and Antonia Riveros

Fabian Duarte and coauthors use an interesting “difference in discontinuities” approach to show that the increase in insurance coverage among adults ages 60–64 due to the Affordable Care Act greatly increased rates of cancer detection for this population. Fifty-nine additional incidents of cancer

“They’re trying to protect their market share,” said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “They see it as necessary to maintain good relations with the agencies and with the individuals who are involved in decision-making because that’s the way government works.”

They’re trying to protect their market share,” said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “They see it as necessary to maintain good relations with the agencies and with the individuals who are involved in decision-making because that’s the way government works.