Monday marked the start of a special session called to pass Florida’s budget. Right on cue, the heavily hospital-connected State Senate is pushing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion again. With a slightly modified version now rebranded as FHIX 2.0 (or Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange Program), the Florida Senate is pushing against a resolute House and a Governor that has all but threatened a veto.
As of the end of the 2015 Affordable Care Act open enrollment period, 11.7 million people had signed up for coverage in a Health Insurance Marketplace (though somewhat fewer likely ended up paying their first month’s premium and getting covered.)
2015 Marketplace signups varied substantially across states when looked at as a share of the “potential market” for the Marketplaces, ranging from a high of 70% in Vermont and 64% in Florida to lows of less than 25% in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, Hawaii, and Alaska.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling by the end of June in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the legality of health insurance subsidies provided to low- and middle-income people in the 34 states where the federal government is operating the insurance Marketplace under the Affordable Care Act.
The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted to repeal two pieces of ObamaCare.
The committee advanced measures that would repeal the medical device tax and a cost-cutting panel known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Both bills are scheduled to go to the House floor the week of June 15.
With one month until the Supreme Court is expected to rule on King v. Burwell, Pennsylvania submitted a blueprint to the federal government to establish a state healthcare exchange. The plan, submitted on Tuesday, hedges against the possibility that the court could rule healthcare subsidies illegal, a decision that would affect millions of Americans throughout the 34 states that rely on the federal exchange, also known as healthcare.gov.
The health law’s expansion of Medicaid in many states hasn’t benefited nonprofit hospitals in those states as expected, according to a new report by Moody’s Investors Service.
Hospitals in the mostly blue states that expanded Medicaid were largely expected to benefit from fewer unpaid bills and more paying customers, but that hasn’t generally translated into better operating margins or cash flow, Moody’s found.
Performance improved across the board—including in the mostly Republican-led states that opted out of the law’s Medicaid expansion—as the economy gained steam last year and unemployment declined.
About 13 percent of people who signed up for health insurance coverage in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act have fallen off the rolls, many because they failed to pay their share of premiums, the Obama administration said Tuesday.
Approximately 6.4 million Americans could lose their subsidies for health insurance if the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration this month, according to new federal data released Tuesday.
The Obama administration has posted the 2016 rate increases in excess of 10% that the Obamacare health plans are requesting.
There are a lot of them.
House lawmakers are gearing up to take fresh aim at the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices.
The House Ways and Means Committee will consider a bill Tuesday to repeal the 2.3% excise tax on sales of devices including pacemakers and stents. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Erik Paulsen, a Minnesota Republican. Read about Paulsen’s bill.
A repeal of the tax has passed the House three times previously, according to Paulsen’s office: once as a stand-alone bill and twice as part of other bills. The Senate passed a nonbinding repeal of the tax in 2013.
The tax raises money for President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law. Repeal would reduce revenues by $26.5 billion from next year through 2025, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Paulsen’s bill doesn’t include a way to make up the lost revenue.