The Lowdown » Health care http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown Decoding the news Wed, 22 May 2013 01:55:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5 Explaining Insurance Exchanges and Other Sexy Health Speak http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/07/11/health-insurance-exchanges-medicaid-expansion-and-other-good-conversation-starters-for-a-first-date/ http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/07/11/health-insurance-exchanges-medicaid-expansion-and-other-good-conversation-starters-for-a-first-date/#comments Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:46:35 +0000 Matthew Green http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=2763 Continue reading →]]> OK. I’m going to go out on a limb here in suggesting that the nitty gritty of Obama’s Affordable Care Act might not exactly be the most exciting topic of conversation out there (I mean, come on, what could be sexier than insurance exchanges?). But given the amount of attention the law and subsequent litigation has gotten, it’s pretty important to understand what the thing actually does, particularly for the roughly 55 million Americans who are currently without health insurance.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation did a series of short animated explainers on some of the central components of the new law. These are concepts that get thrown around a lot in the news but are pretty hard to grasp. So take a look (and just maybe, you’ll be the hit of the cocktail party):

Health Insurance Exchanges

Medicaid Expansion

Cost Sharing

Insurance Market Reforms

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