Recent Articles

The Affordable Care Act’s health insurance co-ops absorbed deep financial losses last year, and 2016 is shaping up to be a make-or-break year for these nonprofit alternatives to traditional insurers. Officially called Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, these still-fledgling insurers were devised during the ACA’s creation to inject competition into insurance markets. But they have…

Christopher E. Press nails our experience (“$lammed by ObamaCare,” op-ed, March 8). My wife and I are self-employed and were content with our modest, cost-effective health insurance. By “self-insuring,” we knew we risked a little higher deductible if something were to happen. When the president talked up his health-care plan, we weren’t really concerned since…

Last year’s final enrollment numbers under President Barack Obama’s health care law fell just short of a target the administration had set, the government reported Friday. The numbers are important because the insurance markets created by the president’s 2010 health care law face challenges building and maintaining enrollment. The marketplaces offer subsidized private insurance to…

The average monthly ObamaCare premium grew by about 5 percent over last year once financial assistance is factored in, according to government data released Friday. The average monthly premium on the ObamaCare marketplace is $106 this year, compared to $101 last year, according to a new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report. Those…

Ask the price of anything and the answer is always the same: What insurance do you have? Patients are blocked from shopping for fair value. The part of the Affordable Care Act which was supposed to control insurance costs, perversely, incentivizes insurers to pay higher, not lower costs. Under the Affordable Care Act, premiums and…

When agencies release information on a Friday afternoon, it is generally because of unfavorable news they hope will lose potency over the weekend. On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released 2015 end-of-the-year exchange enrollment data. After reviewing the numbers, it is understandable why HHS would want this release to attract as…

Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have asked America’s Health Insurance Plans and several major insurance companies to brief staffers by next week on reinsurance payments to insurers by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) wrote to Marilyn Tavenner, president…

The failures of a dozen non­profit health insurance plans created by the Affordable Care Act could cost the government up to $1.2 billion, according to a harsh new congressional report that concludes federal officials ignored early warnings about the plans’ fragility and moved in too late as problems arose. The report, released Thursday by a…

In its release of wonk beach reading late last month, the 539-page  HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2017 and the 87-page 2017 Letter to Issuers in the Federally-facilitated Marketplace, the federal government displayed its latest efforts to apply science to the issue of network adequacy.  Beginning in 2018, for policies sold on healthcare.gov, the…

A Senate panel found that the government ignored warning signs that Obamacare co-op plans were a bad bet when it doled out $1.2 billion in taxpayer funds to them. The report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released during a hearing Thursday, found that in 2014 the Department of Health and Human Services gave…