“By combining the HHS data on enrollment through the Exchanges through March 31,
2014 with the HHS data on Exchange funding through March 31, 2014, the attached chart
calculates a cost-per-enrollee for each state’s Exchange.”
“Celeste Castillo, a Guatemalan immigrant, was invited to a news conference with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius early last year to help promote enrollment in the country’s new health insurance marketplaces…Fourteen months later, the 57-year-old nanny was still uninsured.”
“A new study gives ammunition to what health economists and health insurers have argued for years: When hospitals buy physician practices, the result is usually higher hospital prices and increased spending by privately insured patients.”
“RomneyCare’s pioneering health insurance exchange is headed for the scrap heap.
Bay State officials are taking steps this week to junk central parts of their dysfunctional health insurance exchange — the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law — and merge with the federal enrollment site HealthCare.gov.”
“New poll: Majority Oppose #ObamaCare Medicaid expansion in VA under .@GovernorVA. Why? @josharchambault explains:
New polling out of Virginia is sure to disrupt the media’s narrative on ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion that the public overwhelmingly supports it. The results could even have a ripple effect far beyond the Commonwealth’s borders as 24 other states still debate expansion.”
“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.”