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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama is seeking an average rate increase of 39 percent on individual plans offered through the Obamacare marketplace, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The proposed rate hikes will affect more than 160,000 people in Alabama who purchase insurance through the federal exchange, or about 5 percent…

With Donald Trump’s presidential campaign faltering, Republican health policy experts are gaming out Plan B for working with a Hillary Clinton administration to achieve conservative healthcare goals. Their focus is on a possible “grand bargain” that would give conservative states greater flexibility to design market-based approaches to make coverage more affordable and reduce spending in…

Projected employer benefit costs are a stark contrast to the expected premium increases and out-of-pocket costs on the Obamacare exchanges next year. Employer-sponsored premium increases are expected to be about half of what has been proposed on individual exchanges for next year. Net deductibles are expected to be, on average, about one-third of those on…

Weeks after announcing a new “relationship-based” health insurance plan that would provide patients unlimited access to health coaches and primary doctors with no co-pay, Harken Health Insurance withdrew its application to open in South Florida in 2017. Harken’s withdrawal further narrows the number of health insurance choices for customers who qualify for federal subsidies under…

“If Hillary Clinton were able to institute a public option, I anticipate it would accelerate insurers’ exit from Obamacare exchanges, making it unlikely that exchanges would ever become profitable, as Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed-care are. While those programs have bipartisan political support, Republican politicians are fully committed to opposing Obamacare exchanges. However, a public…

Narrow networks have changed considerably under the Affordable Care Act, but the trajectory of regulation remains unclear. Health insurance plans with limited networks of providers are common on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) health insurance Marketplaces. Recent studies have found that these “narrow network” plans constituted nearly half of all Marketplace offerings in the first…

Aetna’s decision to abandon its ObamaCare expansion plans and rethink its participation altogether came as a surprise to many. It shouldn’t have. Everything that’s happened now was predicted by the law’s critics years ago. Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that this was supposed to be a break-even year for its ObamaCare business. Instead, the company…

It’s hard to exaggerate the alchemy of distortions that are turning ObamaCare into such a pending disaster that big insurers like Aetna, Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group,once supporters, can’t cut back their participation fast enough. ObamaCare was always going to be a questionable deal for taxpayers if the only people who signed up were poorer…

Competition on the Obamacare marketplaces will decline next year. There will be significantly more places in the country where customers have no choice of health insurance because just one company signed up to sell coverage. This is the conclusion that health policy experts have increasingly gravitated toward in recent months and weeks, as major insurance…

  House Speaker Paul Ryan’s health care blueprint, released late last month as part of his “A Better Way” reform agenda, would deliver affordable, accessible health coverage at less cost and with less disruption to the health care market than Obamacare. Ryan’s plan would slash premiums by, among other things, getting rid of Obamacare’s costly…