“The Affordable Care Act’s enrollment numbers mean less about the midterms than Democrats think.”
“The District’s health exchange has a problem — a big money problem.
Like the 14 states that started online marketplaces, the District faces a year-end deadline to prove its Web site can move past technology glitches to meet the next looming challenge in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act: financial self-sufficiency.”
“The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Employer Shared Responsibility provision, commonly referred to as the Employer Mandate, requires all employers with 50 employees, or 50 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs), to provide health insurance coverage beginning in 2014. Similar to the law’s individual mandate to carry health insurance, noncompliance carries a fine, levied to help offset the cost of providing insurance coverage in the ACA’s state based insurance exchanges.”
“Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is considering expanding health coverage for the poor without the approval of the state legislature, a move that would muscle his top priority past Republican opponents but also throw his young administration into a partisan firestorm and uncertain legal territory.”
“Around 900,000 Medi-Cal applicants statewide — 300,000 of them in Los Angeles County — are still awaiting final processing of their applications, state and local officials said Wednesday.”
“In April, the U.S. economy added 288,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest numbers, which easily beats expectations of around 215,000 hires. The unemployment rate dropped to an encouraging 6.3 percent, but not because of that impressive headline number.”
“My mother is not one to seek attention by complaining, so her recent woeful Facebook post caught my eye: “The poor get poorer.” It diverged from the more customary stream of inspirational quotes, recipes and snapshots from her tiny cottage in Pierce County, Wash. The post continued: “I just received a notice: ‘In order to comply with the new healthcare law, your current health plan will be discontinued on December 31, 2013.'”
“Data provided to the committee by every insurance provider in the health care law’s Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) shows that, as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process.”
“Just more than a quarter of the eight million people who signed up for health plans under the Affordable Care Act are in the prized demographic of 18 to 34 years old, falling short of the figure considered ideal to keep down policy prices.”
“Hispanics, a key demographic for the Affordable Care Act, did not appear to sign up for health insurance through the law’s marketplaces at the rate the Obama administration had hoped, according to new government data.”