The Congressional Budget Office projects millions of workers will leave employer-sponsored health plans over the next decade because of ObamaCare.
Some will opt to go on Medicaid, but others will be kicked off their company plans by employers who decide not to offer coverage anymore, according to a new CBO report titled, “Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2016 to 2026.”
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The GOP committee chairmen issued subpoenas for Health and Human Services (HHS) documents related the “Basic Health Program,” which they say the administration is unconstitutionally funding despite a lack of appropriation from Congress.
Republicans say the Obama administration is paying out these funds for the program even though Congress has not appropriated the money. The administration argues that it already has a permanent appropriation under the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans say that permanent appropriation was only for the law’s tax credits, not for the Basic Health Program.
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The analysis, based on claims from 21 Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers around the country, highlights a challenge the companies say they face covering the population that signed up for plans issued under the ACA, sold both on the law’s signature marketplaces and outside them.
A number of Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers faced increasing financial losses in 2015 on their ACA business, and some have responded by raising rates or tweaking their approaches this year.
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The justices heard oral arguments in the case just last week. Now they are asking the parties to address how employees would obtain contraceptive coverage through their employer’s insurance companies without any involvement from the employer, including notifying the government, their insurer, or third-party administrator of their objection.
The parties have the opportunity to spell out for the Supreme Court how such a system could work without controlling the Little Sisters’ and other employers’ insurance plans.
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According to a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association report, people who enrolled in health insurance through the ACA appear to be sick than expected. People who enrolled in individual health insurance plans after 2014 were less healthy and used more healthcare in 2014 and 2015 than those who were already enrolled in individual plans and those who receive insurance through their employer.
The report isn’t without its shortcomings. It looked only at BCBS plans, not the entire universe of Obamacare insurers. But that’s still a sizable sample. BCBS companies participate in the exchanges more than any other insurer.
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The Supreme Court asked for additional information from both sides on “whether and how” employees of religious nonprofits could get contraceptive coverage through other means that would be less objectionable to their employers.
The goal, is to address how employees could still get contraceptive coverage “but in a way that does not require any involvement” from the religious employers, meaning they would not have to sign the form that they currently object to.
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In a report, the Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that there are around two million low-income, uninsured people in those 20 states who have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder.
Medicaid has long been a joint federal-state program that offers near-free care to the very poor. Under the health law, Washington pays almost all of the costs of insuring people who have slightly higher incomes.
Opponents of expansion argue that neither states nor the federal government can afford to further swell the program, and that a shortage of providers to treat the newly insured poses an additional challenge in trying to enroll more people in it.
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Gonshorowski and Haislmaier examined the effects of the law’s new insurance regulations they found the three most costly ones—age rating restrictions, benefit mandates, and minimum actuarial value requirements—increased the cost of the previously available least expensive plans in a state by 41 percent to 51 percent for younger adults (the group most likely to be uninsured), and by 1 percent to 18 percent for pre-retirement-age adults.
The Food and Drug Administration said this month that it will delay enforcement of menu labeling rules – again – until next year. Passed as part of the health care overhaul in 2010, the rules will eventually require restaurants and other establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of food “clearly and conspicuously” on their menus, menu boards and displays.
Many have blamed the increase on the Affordable Care Act, which expanded health insurance coverage to millions more Americans through Medicaid — known as Medi-Cal in California — and government-run health exchanges.
Last year, a national survey of 2,099 emergency doctors by the American College of Emergency Physicians reported that 28 percent of respondents said the volume of ER patients in their hospitals “increased greatly” since the health law took effect. And 47 percent said the volume “increased slightly.”
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