Articles on the implementation of ObamaCare.
The toll of failed co-op insurers, which were intended to challenge dominant companies that wield considerable power to dictate prices, has left about 500,000 customers scrambling to find health insurance for next year. A ninth co-op, which served Iowa and Nebraska, closed in February.
Remember when President Obama said Obamacare was working “better than intended“? Perhaps he should pay closer attention to what the person in charge of Obamacare is really saying. DHHS Secretary Burwell announced in a conference call last week “We believe 10 million is a strong and realistic goal” for enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges in 2016.
The cataract of insurance co-op failures—nine down, 14 to go—has liberals defensive over ObamaCare. Most amusing is their attempt to blame this debacle conceived by liberals and perpetrated by liberals on, yes, Republicans.
The federal health insurance exchange that serves consumers in 38 states will open for browsing Sunday. The site will be faster and easier to use, and it will allow consumers to calculate their out-of-pocket costs, Department of Health and Human Services officials said Friday. A key feature of HealthCare.gov won’t be ready, however. Consumers who want to search which doctors and prescription drugs that different plans cover won’t have that new tool available yet. Officials wouldn’t commit to whether it would be available before the third open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act exchanges starts Nov. 1.
It’s crunch time for thousands of small business owners who must comply with requirements of the health care law for the first time.
Companies with 50 to 99 full-time employees must offer affordable insurance to employees and their dependents starting Jan. 1. They must also file tax forms with the government by Jan. 31 detailing the cost of their coverage and the names and Social Security numbers of employees and their dependents. While companies of all sizes are subject to the law must file the forms, smaller businesses without big staffs to handle the paperwork may have to hire someone to do it — at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Nearly 67,000 customers of Consumers’ Choice Health Insurance will have to shop for new insurance at the end of the year when the company shuts down its operations in 2016.
The state Department of Insurance made the announcement on Thursday. The company and the state agency did not give specifics on what precipitated the closure, only saying a look at long-term sustainability showed problems.
States that accepted Obamacare expansions have had Medicaid enrollment increase 18 percent, and total Medicaid spending grow 17.7 percent, a recent report from Kaiser Family Foundation has shown. Alternatively, states that chose not expand under Obamacare had Medicaid enrollment increase 5.1 percent and total spending grew 6.1 percent.
This is not particularly surprising. Obamacare has certainly led to more being enrolled within Medicaid—which has been costly for taxpayers.
A full 32.3 million non-elderly people do not have health insurance despite the costly health reform act and the individual mandate tax penalty, new analysis shows.
Nearly half of the 32.3 million uninsured, or 15.7 million, are still not getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid, new state-by-state analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals. More than a quarter of the uninsured are either eligible adults or children.
ObamaCare is heading toward a death spiral.
The Obama administration is having trouble selling insurance plans to healthy people. That’s a big problem: When the young and healthy don’t enroll, premiums have to be hiked to cover the costs of older, sicker people, discouraging even more young people from signing up.
As startup insurers born of Obamacare collapse nationwide, the one in Illinois is drastically limiting enrollment to last for the long haul.
Land of Lincoln Health, one of 23 so-called health insurance co-ops backed by federal loans, is capping enrollment for the signup period that begins Nov. 1. The health plan has about 55,000 members, including individuals and businesses. It wants to end 2016 with only about 15,000 more.