When the open enrollment period for the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange kicks off Sunday, one carrier with thousands of patients won’t be ready to offer plans through the state’s online portal. New Mexico Health Connections has announced that its insurance offerings on the exchange will be delayed by one or two weeks as some…
DetailsThe Affordable Care Act (ACA) called for the establishment of non-profit “Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans” (CO-OP) to offer health insurance at lower prices and with patient, rather than corporate, interests at heart. Almost half the CO-OPs have failed in the first two years, with five failures announced just in the last month. Understanding the…
DetailsInsurance regulators said Friday the financial condition of Health Republic of New York, the largest of 23 health insurance co-ops established by a $2.4 billion Obamacare program, is “substantially worse than the company previously reported in its filings.” It is unclear if the co-op deliberately misled state regulators in its original filings, or if regulators…
DetailsAbout 29 million people are still without health insurance, government estimates show — down more than a third since 2013. About half are eligible for subsidized coverage through the marketplaces or can enroll in Medicaid. Signing them up won’t be easy, Obamacare navigators and advocates say. Many don’t see the need for coverage, they believe…
DetailsDuring the health reform debate in 2009 and 2010 that preceded the adoption of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one of the prominent arguments used by advocates for national control of the health insurance market was that the existence of private market in health insurance led to “waste” in the form of advertising and marketing…
DetailsThe Pacific Legal Foundation filed an appeal Monday asking the Supreme Court to hear a new challenge to the Affordable Care Act which argues that the ACA’s taxes are unconstitutional because they originated in a bill written by the Senate. Under the Constitution’s Origination Clause, all bills that levy and raise taxes must begin in…
DetailsOur health care system is a complex system. As I explained in Priceless, there is no known, reliable model of how it works. Whatever policy changes we make, there are certain to be unintended consequences and they may make matters worse than when we started. So how should we approach health policy? In an article…
DetailsHealthCare.gov is going to see some shrinkage in 2016. The number of health insurance plans available on that huge federal Obamacare marketplace for 2016 is decreasing by up to 12 percent compared with this year, industry sources told CNBC. And there will be an even sharper reduction — of more than 40 percent — in…
DetailsAfter months of internal debate, the House passed a budget-reconciliation bill last Friday taking aim at Obamacare, but it is far from assured that the bill, or even an amended version of it, will ever emerge from the Senate. Budget-reconciliation bills are powerful legislative vehicles because they cannot be filibustered in the Senate (it takes…
DetailsThe Pacific Legal Foundation filed an appeal Monday asking the Supreme Court to hear a new challenge to the Affordable Care Act which argues that the ACA’s taxes are unconstitutional because they originated in a bill written by the Senate. Under the Constitution’s Origination Clause, all bills that levy and raise taxes must begin in…
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