About 9.9 million people got health insurance coverage through the marketplaces set up by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as of June 30, a decline from earlier in the year though still higher than the Obama administration’s target.
Small businesses are the engines of the American economy, but it’s getting to the point where it is almost impossible for them to get ahead.
Soaring health costs are negatively impacting their ability to compete and still offer affordable health coverage for their employees. Since 2004, the average annual family premium in small firms increased 69 percent. Family insurance premiums for small firms increased from $9,950 in 2003 to $16,834 in 2014, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The problem is the economy rose at just a fraction of premium increases, creating an affordability gap many find too difficult to surmount.
The IRS began using an ObamaCare database before it had worked out all the security kinks, according to a new report from a federal watchdog.
The Treasury inspector general for tax administration found that the IRS had not completed all the necessary testing for the Coverage Data Repository (CDR) before the 2015 tax filing season started.
According to a Sept. 3 report by Anna Wilde Mathews of the Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health announced it will cut back its range of plans offered through the ObamaCare marketplaces.