“The city council of Washington, D.C., voted Tuesday to allow a tax on all health insurers selling inside the district to fund its Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace.”
“The D.C. Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a broad tax on all health-related insurance products sold in the nation’s capital to solve a big money problem faced by its online health insurance exchange.”
“A new analysis from Avalere Health finds that exchange enrollment meets or exceeds expectations in 22 states (44%), even after accounting for any attrition due to nonpayment of premiums. Assuming 15 percent of enrollees do not take the final enrollment step and pay their premiums, over 6.8 million people who enrolled through April 19 will have coverage effective as of May 1.”
“In recent opeds for the Los Angeles Register and the Orange County Register, I explain how ObamaCare’s requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions at the same price as healthy people dramatically reduces the risks associated with not having health insurance, and therefore creates a perverse incentive for people to drop their coverage and wait until they get sick to re-enroll.”
“When Capitol Hill Republicans and other conservative health policy analysts focus on developing viable “replacement” alternatives to Obamacare, they usually start with changing how the tax code subsidizes purchases of health insurance coverage. The two main proposals would expand the benefits of the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) premiums to other insurance purchasers – either through tax deductions or through tax credits – and then limit its maximum amount per insured person. But neither one by itself strikes the right balance between efficiency, equity, and sustainability.”
“If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation’s second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.””
“People who obtained health plans off the marketplaces after March 31 will not automatically face a penalty under the individual mandate, the Obama administration said Friday.”
“he Department of Housing and Urban Development is under investigation into whether the agency violated appropriations laws by promoting the Affordable Care Act.”
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into problems that plagued Oregon’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, after the state was forced to scrap its problematic health insurance exchange that was never fully functional, according to people familiar with the investigation.”