The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the ObamaCare insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016. Maine’s Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the co-op. An Associated Press review of financial statements from 10 of the 11 surviving co-ops shows that they lost, on average, more than $21 million in the first nine months of this year.
Cassandra Gekas, operations director for Vermont Health Connect, said staff members are working on a problem in which hundreds of people who paid their monthly premiums on time were canceled for nonpayment. Apparently, the cancellations were related to a five- to seven-day period it takes for the system to process end of the month payments. Vermont Health Connect was plagued with technical glitches and security problems after its launch Oct. 1, 2013.
U.S. health care spending last year grew at the fastest pace since President Obama took office, driven by expanded coverage under his namesake law and by zooming prescription drug costs, the government said Wednesday. The report by nonpartisan experts at the Department of Health and Human Services is an annual snapshot of the nation’s health care system, a major slice of the economy. Rising spending eventually has consequences for taxpayers, employers and individuals.
The sudden collapse of the largest nonprofit insurance cooperative created under the Affordable Care Act is causing headaches in New York, especially for medical providers owed millions of dollars for treating the failed plan’s patients. Hospitals, doctors, and other clinicians are legally obligated to continue treating Health Republic patients through the end of the month but have been given no assurances they will ever be paid for that care.
Executives with Arizona’s nonprofit health insurance co-op said Tuesday that they have failed to come up with additional financial backing and the insurer plans to shut down all operations December 31, 2015. The announcement by Meritus Health Partners means 59,000 Arizonans it now covers need to find a new insurer by December 15 if they want coverage on January 1, 2016.
Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul are taking yet another challenge to the law to the Supreme Court, and say they will be back with more if this one fails. A new appeal being filed Monday by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends the law violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives.
It’s crunch time for thousands of small business owners who must comply with requirements of the health care law for the first time.
Companies with 50 to 99 full-time employees must offer affordable insurance to employees and their dependents starting Jan. 1. They must also file tax forms with the government by Jan. 31 detailing the cost of their coverage and the names and Social Security numbers of employees and their dependents. While companies of all sizes are subject to the law must file the forms, smaller businesses without big staffs to handle the paperwork may have to hire someone to do it — at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars.