Between the end of March and the end of June, 29 states plus the District of Columbia lost Obamacare enrollees, based on an Americans for Tax Reform analysis of recently released data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In total, Obamacare exchanges had a net loss of 238,119 enrollees in the three-month period.
Iowa’s experience with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has been turbulent. In 2014, state officials agreed to expand Medicaid, despite the fact that the Obama administration denied virtually all of their requests for flexibility.
Iowa’s expansion was loosely modeled after Arkansas’ Obamacare expansion. Under Iowa’s “Marketplace Choice” waiver, able-bodied adults above the poverty line would receive Medicaid benefits through Obamacare exchange plans.
The price of the most popular health plans sold through Maryland’s insurance exchange will jump, on average, by about one quarter next year, fueling questions about whether coverage under the Affordable Care Act will remain affordable in the state and elsewhere.
The 26 percent average increase in monthly premiums are for CareFirst plans, which cover three-fourths of the state residents who have bought insurance under the federal health-care law. The price jump, scheduled for January, is among rate changes that the state’s insurance regulators have approved for plans sold to individual families and small businesses.
The state auditor says Hawaii Health Connector “wasted and abused” millions of dollars in public funds on an IT contractor.
In a report released this week, the auditor said the Connector awarded Mansha Consulting LLC $21.6 million in contracts, making Mansha its second-highest paid contractor.
The auditor said the Connector awarded multi-million dollar contracts based on personal recommendations instead of taking steps to ensure it selected the most qualified vendor at the best price.
The Louisiana Department of Insurance has taken over Metairie-based Louisiana Health Cooperative Inc., a nonprofit health insurance company created with $66 million in federal loans.
District Judge Donald Johnson issued an order Tuesday granting the department’s request to place the co-op into rehabilitation. The order allows Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon to take possession and control of the failed insurer. The department’s regulators have been stationed at the co-op since July 29.
The soaring costs of insuring the state’s poorest residents drove health care spending in Massachusetts up 4.8 percent last year, double the rate of growth in 2013, dealing a setback to the state’s efforts to contain medical costs.
The increase far exceeds inflation, which was 1.6 percent last year, and blows past a state goal of holding health care spending growth to 3.6 percent annually, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the state Center for Health Information and Analysis.
Florida Healthy Kids Corporation is blaming President Obama’s health care law after notifying parents that health insurance premiums will increase for thousands of kids starting next month, jumping from $140 to as high as $284.
Healthy Kids, which offers insurance options where parents can pay full-price or get subsidized coverage depending on eligibility, said the increases will affect the families of nearly 34,749 children in the full-pay program. That’s about 19 percent of the organization’s 178,873 enrollees.
The state of Hawaii is likely to extend the operations of the Hawaii Health Connector through October 2016 for $3.3 million, the health insurance exchange’s officials announced Friday at its board of directors meeting.
Hawaii’s state-based insurance marketplace also received confirmation Thursday that the federal government would chip in a $2.8 million grant to support “marketplace assister organizations” — the Connector’s nonprofit partners that assist the community in signing up for health insurance.
The promise of free money is hard to turn down, and so when Obamacare offered the states a cheap way of expanding Medicaid, Gov. Rick Snyder found it hard to resist. Yet just a year into Michigan’s expansion, it’s not such a bargain.
In its mission to make sure more Americans have health insurance, the Affordable Care Act depended on states to expand their Medicaid programs to individuals with incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
No. Take more. Really.
While most states have been pushing health insurers to curb proposed price increases, Florida is telling some of them they can charge more.
The state on Wednesday approved an average premium increase of 9.5 percent for Affordable Care Act plans sold to individuals for next year. Insurers had asked to boost rates 8.6 percent on average.