Articles on the implementation of ObamaCare.
The Trump administration is moving ahead with Obama-era requirements to post calorie counts in restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores and pizza delivery chains nationwide next year.
Despite years of opposition by some food sellers, the Food and Drug Administration is offering only minor compromises to industry complaints about the difficulties of displaying calories at takeout chains, self-service buffets and other non-restaurant food locations.
The FDA posted a preliminary guidance online Tuesday to help businesses comply with the law.
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The CMS has finalized a proposed rule to exempt more small providers from complying with MACRA. It also reversed course on plans to give providers a pass on gauging whether they are cutting costs under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, or MIPS.
Physician practices with less than $90,000 in Medicare revenue or fewer than 200 unique Medicare patients per year would be exempted under the rule finalized Tuesday.
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Democrats are accusing the Trump Administration of “sabotaging” Obama Care by discontinuing illegal subsidies to insurers, but last week even an Obama-appointed judge in California said otherwise. The ruling deserves more public attention.
Federal Judge Vince Chhabria rejected and ridiculed a petition by 18 states to enjoin the White House from stopping cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that subsidize lower copays and deductibles for consumers on the exchanges who earn less than 250% of the poverty line. “It appears initially that the Trump Administration has the stronger legal argument,” the judge noted, adding that “the emergency relief sought by the states would be counterproductive.”
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The House and the Trump administration are asking to keep a pause on a years-long court battle over the legality of crucial ObamaCare payments to insurers, while Democratic attorneys general are seeking for the case to proceed.
In 2014, the House sued the Obama administration, arguing it was funding key payments to insurers illegally, alleging that there wasn’t a direct appropriation from Congress. The House won, and the Obama administration appealed the ruling.
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Federal health officials are proposing changes to rules for coverage sold through the ACA’s insurance marketplaces that, starting in 2019, would let states alter the benefits that health plans must provide and limit enrollment help for consumers. In envisioning a larger role for states in setting benefits, the draft rule would still require ACA plans to cover 10 categories of medical services. But for the first time, any state could adopt benefits standards already in use by another state—or rewrite its own standards.
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The Trump administration on Friday proposed new health insurance regulations that could affect basic benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, but not for a couple of years.
Loosening “Obamacare” benefit requirements was a major sticking point for congressional Republicans in thus-far fruitless efforts to repeal the law.
The complex new plan from the administration would give states a potential path to easing some requirements.
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Data released this week from data.healthcare.gov show that choice in the types of plans available on the Exchanges continued to diminish between 2017 and 2018. There has been diminished choice in the number of insurers and level of competition. In 2017,142 of the 420 rating areas on which data.healthcare.gov maintains information had just one issuer. For 2018, 179 of the rating areas will have just one issuer.
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Insurers selling Affordable Care Act plans have a compelling new pitch: free health insurance.
When sales of plans on the law’s exchanges begin Nov. 1, a growing number of consumers around the country will be able to get coverage for 2018 without paying any monthly premium, according to health insurers and an analysis of newly available federal data.
In nearly all of the 2,722 counties included in the data, some consumers will be able to obtain free health insurance because they qualify for larger federal premium subsidies that cover the full cost of a plan, according to the new analysis.
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Anthem’s membership in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces will decline by 70% in 2018, executives told investors Wednesday on the insurer’s third-quarter earnings call. About 1.4 million people had ACA-compliant plans with Anthem as of Sept. 30, 900,000 of whom bought coverage on the exchanges.
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The plan Iowa has developed to salvage its insurance market — the Iowa Stopgap Measure — suffers three major flaws.
- Although the Iowa Stopgap Measure helps upper middle class Iowans afford health insurance, it illegally deprives poorer Iowans of the ability to make use of health insurance.
- The Iowa Stopgap Measure creates effective marginal tax rates of more than 100% on many individuals, particularly those over 50, and excessive effective marginal tax on many others.
- Unless there’s more to its fuzzy math than it has heretofore presented, the Iowa plan costs the federal government a good deal of money.
Don’t add rejection of the Iowa waiver to the list of acts of sabotage of the ACA by the Trump administration. This is an instance where the President has faithfully executed the law. And if that law is not working or if the waiver criteria are too strict, it is to Congress that complaint should be made.
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