| Course | NR 506 Health Care Policy |
|---|---|
| Week | 2 |
| Paper type | Policy issue brief (memo) |
| Length | About 870 words, 2 pages |
| Format | Memo with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 506 Week 2
Memorandum
To: Policy Committee, State Nurses Association
From: Graduate nursing student, NR 506
Date: October 2026
Re: Insulin cost-sharing for people with employer coverage the state cannot reach
The Point in One Paragraph
Federal law now limits what people with Medicare pay for insulin to no more than $35 a month for each covered insulin product, and many states limit cost-sharing in the health plans they regulate. Neither reaches people in self-funded employer plans, which in 2024 covered 63% of workers with employer coverage (KFF, 2024). Only Congress can close that gap. The association should support a federal cost-sharing limit for insulin in private group health plans and should not spend its effort on further state caps, which cannot reach the people left out.
Current Law, Before the Problem
Medicare Part D and Part B. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Part D enrollees pay no deductible for covered insulin, and their cost-sharing for a month's supply of each product is capped: $35 through the 2025 plan year, then $35 or a quarter of the negotiated or maximum fair price, whichever is lower (Inflation Reduction Act, 2022). A similar limit applies to insulin used in pumps covered under Part B. The federal government estimated that about 1.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin would have saved $734 million in Part D if the limit had applied in 2020 (Sayed et al., 2023).
State insurance law. Colorado was the first state to cap insulin cost-sharing, at $100 per 30-day supply for state-regulated health plans from January 1, 2020 (Colorado General Assembly, 2019), and many states have since passed their own limits. These laws apply only to plans the state regulates: individual-market plans and fully insured employer plans.
Self-funded employer plans. An employer that pays its workers' claims from its own funds, rather than buying insurance, is governed by federal law under ERISA, which preempts state insurance mandates. State insulin caps do not apply to these plans.
Company programs. Several insulin manufacturers announced out-of-pocket limits and list price cuts in 2023. These are company policies, not law, and they can be changed or ended by the companies.
The Residual, Not the Population
The problem this brief addresses is not "insulin is expensive" in general. It is a specific group: people who use insulin and are covered by a self-funded employer plan, especially one with a high deductible, where the full negotiated price of insulin is paid out of pocket until the deductible is met. In 2024, 63% of covered workers were in self-funded plans, including 79% of those at large firms (KFF, 2024). A nurse in our state who works for a large hospital system and whose child has type 1 diabetes may well be in this group, and no state law passed by our legislature can help her.
A second residual group is the uninsured, whom no cost-sharing limit can reach because they have no plan to share costs with. They are named here so that the brief does not appear to address them.
A Lever, Not an Aspiration
The lever is a federal amendment applying an insulin cost-sharing limit to private group health plans, including self-funded plans, through the federal statutes that govern them. A model already exists. The Affordable Insulin Now Act, as passed by the House in March 2022, would have capped cost-sharing under private health insurance for a month's supply of selected insulin products at $35 or 25% of the plan's negotiated price, whichever was less, beginning in 2023 (Affordable Insulin Now Act, 2022). The Medicare portion of that idea became law in the Inflation Reduction Act; the private insurance portion did not.
The association's ask to our congressional delegation should be specific: reintroduce and support a private-plan insulin cost-sharing limit that expressly covers self-funded ERISA plans, with a monthly cap and no deductible, matching the Medicare structure.
Numbers With a Year Attached
63% of covered workers were in self-funded employer plans in 2024 (KFF, 2024).
1.5 million Medicare insulin users would have saved money had the cap applied in 2020, a total of $734 million in Part D (Sayed et al., 2023).
$100 per 30-day supply was Colorado's first state cap, effective 2020 (Colorado General Assembly, 2019).
$35 per month per covered insulin product is the Medicare Part D limit for 2023 through 2025 (Inflation Reduction Act, 2022).
The brief does not estimate how many self-funded plan members pay more than $35, because no public source reports that figure. The association could ask the state's largest employers for plan data.
What This Will Not Fix
A federal private-plan cap would not help the uninsured, who need access to lower list prices or to manufacturer or public assistance programs. It would not cover the pen needles, syringes and glucose monitoring supplies that people who use insulin also need, which are outside the Medicare cap as well. And it would shift some costs from patients to plans, which may show up in premiums; the brief takes no position on how large that effect would be, because no reliable estimate for our state is available. These limits are reasons to be precise about what the association is asking for, not reasons to ask for nothing.
References
Affordable Insulin Now Act, H.R. 6833, 117th Cong. (2022).
Colorado General Assembly. (2019). HB19-1216: Reduce insulin prices. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb19-1216
Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-169, 136 Stat. 1818 (2022).
KFF. (2024). 2024 employer health benefits survey. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2024-employer-health-benefits-survey/
Sayed, B. A., Finegold, K., Olsen, T. A., De Lew, N., Sheingold, S., Ashok, K., & Sommers, B. D. (2023). Insulin affordability and the Inflation Reduction Act: Medicare beneficiary savings by state and demographics (Issue Brief). Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/insulin-affordability-ira-data-point
The Chamberlain NR 506 Week 2 instructions
The Week 2 brief has you write a policy brief on an issue relevant to your practice. Graders look for a clear statement of the problem, the laws already in force, the population affected, a recommended policy option, supporting data and a professional format, in APA. Put the point in one paragraph. List the laws already in force and whom each reaches before stating the problem. Define the problem as the group current law leaves out, not as a general complaint. Name the lever specifically: which statute, which body and what change. Give numbers with their years and sources. Say which number you could not find. State what the recommendation will not fix.
How this NR 506 Week 2 example is built
The opening paragraph summarizes the gap. The current law section covers Part D and Part B insulin limits, state caps applying only to state-regulated plans, self-funded employer plans governed by federal law under ERISA and manufacturers' 2023 announcements, which can change. The residual section identifies insulin users in self-funded plans as the group no state can reach and names the uninsured separately. The lever section proposes a federal amendment applying a cap to private group plans, including self-funded plans, and gives the association a specific ask for its congressional delegation. The numbers section lists 63% of covered workers in self-funded plans in 2024 and other figures with years. The final section names the uninsured and list prices as outside the fix.
NR 506 Week 2 rubric: what full points look like
Policy brief rubrics in NR 506 usually score a clear problem statement, knowledge of current policy, a defined affected population, a feasible recommendation, evidence, audience-appropriate format and APA. Knowledge of current law is the row graders check first, and this brief earns it by listing instruments with their reach before naming the problem. The population is credited for being defined as a residual group. The recommendation scores because the lever names a statute and a body. Evidence earns points for numbers with years and an honest note about the one figure not available. Format is credited for a memo to a named committee. Five references, including the statute and the bill, complete APA.
Common NR 506 Week 2 mistakes, and how to avoid them
The commonest loss on this brief is a missing current law section, which reads as though the writer had not checked. A second is a problem defined as a whole population when current law already covers much of it. Students also recommend an aspiration instead of a lever, give numbers without years or ignore who a change will not help. Finding current law does not require a law degree; start with official agency pages and the statutes they cite. If your topic is national but the prompt mentions your state, explain which level can act. The brief should recommend a specific action. Send your issue and an NR 506 brief can be built from current law outward.
Get a NR 506 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 2 instructions and the rubric, along with the health problem your section assigned or the one you have chosen, and a brief written to that specification comes back inside 24-48h, the first one free. If a template with fixed headings is posted in your classroom, send that as well and the brief is built into it.
More NR 506 papers and MSN samples
- NR 506 Week 1: Health Policy at Work Discussion Post
- NR 506 Week 3: Legislative Process Write-up
- NR 506 Week 4: Policy Analysis Paper
- NR 506 Week 5: Rulemaking and Implementation Write-up
- NR 506 Week 6: Interest Group Analysis
- NR 506 Week 7: Policy Evaluation Write-up
- NR 506 Week 8: Policy Synthesis Paper
- NR 506NP Week 2: Scope Legislation Review
- NR 505 Week 2: PICOT Question Write-Up Example
- NR 508 Week 2: Pharmacokinetics Write-up
- NR 504 Week 2: Role Theory Application Paper
NR 506 Week 2 questions, answered
How do I find what already exists without a law degree?
Start from the agency that would administer it rather than from the statute. Program pages state eligibility, effective dates and the rule they operate under, and they link back to the text. Published program reports are the other good entry point, since a duty to report usually means somebody printed numbers. Advocacy summaries are useful for orientation and poor as citations.
My topic is national but the assignment mentions my state.
Write the national frame in a paragraph and spend the brief on the state version, because that is where the operative differences sit. Two states can run the same federal program with different income lines, different application routes and different waiting periods, and a brief that notices one of those has already done more analysis than one staying national.
Should the brief recommend something?
In most sections yes, but the recommendation is the last thing written and the smallest thing in the document. It names one change to one instrument, addressed to whoever holds the power to make it, and what earns it a place is the residual named earlier, not what the author would rather were true. A recommendation nobody named could act on is where these briefs thin out.
Where can I find a free NR 506 Week 2 sample paper?
This page has the complete Week 2 memo on insulin costs for self-funded plan members, with current law, the residual groups, the federal lever, the numbers, the limits and five references.
Why can state insulin caps not reach some workers in the NR 506 Week 2 brief?
Because employers that pay claims from their own funds run self-funded plans governed by federal law under ERISA, which state insurance laws cannot regulate.