Recent Articles

Highmark Health is cutting reimbursement to doctors by 4 percent effective April 1 for care provided to patients with health insurance bought through the government exchange — the latest effort to trim losses in a market segment that has caused headaches for carriers nationwide. All Pennsylvania doctors who participate in Highmark’s health insurance plans and…

Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 2010, the Obama administration has changed the law 43 times without Congressional approval. The Galen Institute has been keeping track of these administrative changes, which you can find here. Apparently another illegal administrative action, which will cost the U.S. Treasury $3.5 billion, can be added…

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), average premiums in the workplace were up 24 percent for individual plans and 27 percent for family plans. The vast majority of privately insured Americans – 9 out of 10 – purchase coverage through their employers. Cost-sharing grew even faster. KFF reports that the average deductible for all workers was $1,077 in 2015, up…

A federal appeals court in Atlanta on Thursday upheld a contraceptive mandate included in the president’s health care law but is delaying the implementation of its ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court can weigh in on the issue. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to reject challenges to…

A government report published Thursday shows ObamaCare is still far from achieving one of its goals. President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, has brought the number of people lacking health insurance to a historic low. Yet it also aimed to reduce visits to emergency departments, where the uninsured would often go to receive care but which are…

A big hospital chain’s surprise decision to write off a slug of bad debt may be a signal of much deeper consumer healthcare strains being caused by ObamaCare. Community Health Systems surprised analysts this week, announcing that among other things, the company would take a $169 million provision for bad debt. The write off was a…

The Affordable Care Act changed employers’ role in the U.S. health care system. The ACA fundamentally altered the employer-based system by making the provision of health benefits mandatory rather than voluntary for employers with more than 50 employees and establishing minimum criteria for affordability and coverage. In addition, a “play or pay” model was created, providing…

The ObamaCare health exchange in Colorado faced “numerous weaknesses” and had “inadequate security settings,” leaving the personal information of enrollees vulnerable, according to a new audit. The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services publicly released its review of Connect for Health Colorado on Wednesday, revealing the exchange had inadequate security measures…

Medicaid’s complex federal-state financing structure has long created perverse incentives that discourage efficient care. Key to the problem is the federal government’s uncapped reimbursement of state Medicaid expenditures, which encourages states to artificially inflate their Medicaid spending. Such schemes have significantly increased over the past several years and they likely add tens of billions in…

California’s health exchange may require its health plans to pay sales commissions to insurance agents to keep insurers from shunning the sickest and costliest patients. Covered California is working on a proposal that would force the plans to pay commissions effective next year, said Executive Director Peter Lee. The proposed rules could apply to regular…