Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has a simple question: How and why did Congress qualify as a “small business” eligible for special taxpayer subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? For anyone in a real small business — private employers who get no such subsidies — the very idea is absurd. But getting a straight answer is as difficult as getting Lois Lerner’s IRS emails.
In search of answers, Vitter proposed subpoenaing documents from the District of Columbia Health Benefits Exchange Authority. But his colleagues on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee recently voted (14 to five) to block the effort. They’ve tried to justify their lack of curiosity by calling the proposed subpoena an unnecessary “distraction” or an invitation to a “protracted” legal fight. But these are rather obviously lame excuses.
With Milwaukee-based Assurant Health continuing to bleed red ink, its parent company announced in a Tuesday news release it will either sell the health insurer or exit the health insurance business.
Assurant Health’s product lines include Time Insurance and John Alden. The company has more than 1,000 employees at its downtown Milwaukee offices, 501 W. Michigan St.
The impact on those employees will depend on whether the company is sold and the business strategy of a buyer.
“It’s premature for us to comment on possible outcomes,” said Assurant Inc. spokeswoman Vera Carley of impact on employees.
Most filers who received government subsidies to buy Obamacare plans had to pay money back to the IRS this year, according to an H&R Block analysis released Monday that looks at the health law’s first full tax season.
The tax-prep giant studied its own massive customer base and concluded that two-thirds of its filers who got subsidies from Obamacare were overpaid during the course of the year, and owed money back to the IRS on the April 15 deadline.
Republicans are being ridiculed by the right and the left for weighing ideas that would rescue ObamaCare health insurance policies for people in 37 states if the petitioners prevail in King v Burwell.
“Republicans Are Now Trying To Pass Obamacare Extension To Save Their Own Asses,” writes Allen Clifton in Forward Progressives. “GOP Gets Ready to Save the Day If the Court Strikes Down Obamacare Subsidies,” says Rush Limbaugh.
If the Supreme Court decides against the Obama administration in the case, leaders in Congress are indeed determined to pass legislation to protect coverage for an estimated six million people. ObamaCare has so distorted the market for individually-purchased and small group health insurance that Congress has little choice but to throw them a safety net.
Earlier this week, news surfaced that some HealthCare.gov users may have received an incorrect subsidy or Medicaid eligibility determination from the Marketplace. According to reports, HealthCare.gov has been counting Social Security income received by children when calculating the Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) for a household. Once calculated, MAGI is then used to help determine a household’s eligibility for Medicaid or subsidized private insurance. By including a child’s Social Security Income in a household’s income, the Federally-facilitated Marketplace (FFM) likely increased the overall household income, which could have resulted in some persons either not qualifying for Medicaid or an inaccurate tax credit determination. While CMS has acknowledged the error, the agency has so far not given an indication of how many households may be impacted.
The Obama administration is dialing up the pressure on a handful of states that have resisted expanding Medicaid coverage for their low-income residents under the federal health care overhaul.
The leverage comes from a little-known federal fund that helps states and hospitals recoup some of the cost of caring for uninsured patients. The administration says states can just expand Medicaid, as the health care law provides, and then they wouldn’t need as much extra help with costs for the uninsured.
Two top targets so far are Florida and Texas, with large numbers of uninsured residents. Both have received several billion dollars in recent years from Washington under the so-called low income pool, also known as LIP.
Florida’s hospital funding is the first of the nine states — which include Tennessee, California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas and New Mexico — to expire on June 30. But the hospital funds are an optional program, not entitlement programs like Medicaid, meaning the federal government has broad discretion whether to grant them, experts say.
“There’s no doubt that other states that haven’t expanded Medicaid are watching this,” said Joan Alker, Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
As the state struggled under the national spotlight to fix its deeply flawed online health insurance marketplace last year, officials awarded more than $84 million in contracts without competition, about a third of the money spent on the troubled website. About 15 companies benefited from the “sole-source” and “emergency” contracts that did not use competitive bidding, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun through public information requests. The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange’s lack of transparency has been criticized by government watchdogs and state officials, including Gov. Larry Hogan during his successful campaign, but the amount of the noncompetitive awards is now raising eyebrows among government procurement experts and prompting pledges from the administration to curtail the practice.
– See more at: http://www.capitalgazette.com/bs-hs-exchange-contracting-20150417,0,807245,full.story#sthash.q5qkVCoy.dpuf
There are three simple numbers Republicans in Congress need to keep their eyes on in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in King v. Burwell, no matter what the outcome: 28, 60 and 67.
28: The number of GOP governors in states with a federal health insurance exchange where a combined total of 6.5 million subsidy-eligible residents are at risk of losing those subsidies and their insurance if the plaintiffs win in King. The Department of Health and Human Service will offer these governors a quick fix: Simply deem the federal exchanges an “exchange established by the state” for the purpose of receiving federal subsidies. Without a Republicans alternative for these 28 governors, HHS’ escape hatch is going to look very attractive.
60: The number of votes Republicans must rally to overcome a Democratic filibuster of legislation that might put the president in an awkward position — such as repealing the individual mandate in exchange for allowing the subsidies to continue to flow for an interim period.
67: The number of votes Republicans need in the Senate to overcome a presidential veto — an impossible number. Republicans would have to be content to make Democrats take a hard vote on a full “repeal and replace” bill, losing the battle, but hope that it would set them up to win the war by maintaining the Senate and taking the White House in 2017.
Despite being designed to help the poor, certain aspects of Obamacare are holding millions of individuals back who fall into what is being called the “coverage gap.”
Reverend Vann R. Ellison, the president of the Florida based St. Matthew’s House, is trying to bring attention to the issue which he says affects people that fall between the $10,000 and $12,000 a year income range. St. Matthew’s House, which takes care of roughly 1,500 people, provides food and shelter to those individuals trying to work their way out of poverty.
“We generally deal with lower income people trying to get their lives together,” Ellison told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “These are people that can’t afford their own apartments.”
Those in that income range make too much to qualify for assistance under Obamacare but often times make too little to actually afford coverage or the fee that comes with not being covered. It’s an issue that impacts many of the lower income people Ellison is trying to help.
A new analysis from Avalere finds that the penalties associated with the individual mandate, which grow in 2015, might be too low to attract enrollment, particularly among middle-income, healthy individuals.
Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that 68,000 people enrolled in exchange coverage through HealthCare.gov as part of a special enrollment period for individuals paying the individual mandate penalty on their 2014 tax filings. That lackluster uptake of the special enrollment period is driven, in part, because for most people individual mandate penalties are much lower than actual costs of coverage.