“Two years ago Saturday, the Supreme Court changed the law that changed an industry.
The Court’s June 28, 2012, decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act—by the slender margin of a single vote—did more than allow the law’s ambitious agenda to proceed. It famously altered the law itself, by allowing states to choose whether or not to opt into Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”
“The Supreme Court today rang a victory bell for religious freedom as it ruled 5-4 that “HHS’s contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion” of three closely held companies – Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Specialties, and Mardel.
The companies objected to the Obama administration’s mandate that they must provide, at no cost to their employees, coverage for products that violate their religious beliefs by terminating life in the womb.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, noted that the companies have “sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point.” The administration had argued that the plaintiffs were for-profit corporations and therefore couldn’t have religious beliefs.”
In the four years since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we have heard a wide range of speculative predictions about how private employers sponsoring health coverage would respond. More recent evidence from one of the oldest and largest annual surveys of employer plans, by human resources consulting firm Mercer, provides stronger indications that employer sponsors are neither heading for the exit doors nor sitting by passively as broader implementation of Obamacare unfolds.
“About 5 percent of Americans who were uninsured last year got coverage in 2014, and more than half of those — about 2.8 percent of the population — obtained their plan through an Obamacare exchange, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. The poll, taken after the close of the first enrollment season, pegged the uninsured rate at more than 13 percent.”
“It’s the tax at the heart of Obamacare, but just more than 1 percent of Americans will end up paying it, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) slashed their estimates for how many people will pay the individual mandate tax penalty in 2016 by a third — to 4 million from 6 million — citing exemptions granted by the Obama administration, including exemptions for people whose plans were cancelled because they did not meet the Affordable Care Act’s requirements.”
“Let’s face it, health reform in 2014 is going to be pretty boring from here on out. Why? It’s an election year. That might seem counterintuitive, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) demonstrated the haunting dance of partisan politics and policy making at its least consensus building. So why the yawns for 2014? Because the positions of the advocates and detractors of ACA are pretty well set in stone going into the mid-term elections.”
“For months we’ve been hearing about consumers’ struggles with the state’s new health exchange program. Jesse Jones explains that they’re not alone in the fight — even some of the people paid to work the system are having a hard time.
Martha Gant is an insurance agent who’s used to helping others but now she’s the one in need.”
“When I wrote last week about the slow start for Obamacare’s small business exchanges, I mentioned that some states could slow down the marketplaces’ progress even further in 2015 because of a possible delay recently created by the Obama administration.
The small business exchanges, like the law’s individual exchanges, are a virtual marketplace where businesses with 50 or fewer employees can compare health plans. Besides offering a limited tax credit, Obamacare small business exchanges, or SHOP, are supposed to offer one particular feature that changes the healthcare landscape for small companies: choice.”
“The Obama administration is revamping HealthCare.gov and scrapping significant parts of the federal health-insurance marketplace in an effort to avoid the problems that plagued the site’s launch last fall, according to presentations to health insurers and interviews with government officials and contractors.
But the makeover—and the tight timeline to accomplish it—are raising concerns that consumers could face another rocky rollout this fall when they return to the site to choose health plans. Some key back-end functions,…”
“Congressional budget scorekeepers estimated Thursday that only a fraction of the people without health insurance in 2016 will actually pay a penalty under ObamaCare’s individual mandate.
In a new analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said only 4 million of the 30 million who are expected to be uninsured in 2016 will pay a fine.”