A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the House had the right to sue the Obama administration over billions of dollars in health care spending, a decision that poses a new legal threat to the health care law and gave congressional Republicans a victory in their claims of executive overreach by the White House.
DetailsAbout 9.9 million people got health insurance coverage through the marketplaces set up by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as of June 30, a decline from earlier in the year though still higher than the Obama administration’s target.
DetailsSmall businesses are the engines of the American economy, but it’s getting to the point where it is almost impossible for them to get ahead.
Soaring health costs are negatively impacting their ability to compete and still offer affordable health coverage for their employees. Since 2004, the average annual family premium in small firms increased 69 percent. Family insurance premiums for small firms increased from $9,950 in 2003 to $16,834 in 2014, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The problem is the economy rose at just a fraction of premium increases, creating an affordability gap many find too difficult to surmount.
DetailsThe IRS began using an ObamaCare database before it had worked out all the security kinks, according to a new report from a federal watchdog.
The Treasury inspector general for tax administration found that the IRS had not completed all the necessary testing for the Coverage Data Repository (CDR) before the 2015 tax filing season started.
DetailsAccording to a Sept. 3 report by Anna Wilde Mathews of the Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health announced it will cut back its range of plans offered through the ObamaCare marketplaces.
DetailsThe Supreme Court recently approved the provision of subsidies to people who enroll on the federal healthcare exchange known as HealthCare.gov. But last Thursday, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the biggest threat to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) remains government ineptitude.
DetailsObama-era boondoggles operate on a far grander scale. Consider the massive 2009 “Stimulus” package and all those “shovel-ready” jobs that never materialized. Or the $536-million loan guarantee for Solyndra, shortly before the solar power company went belly up.
DetailsThe Internal Revenue Service paid out over $572 million in excess Obamacare tax credits and sent incorrect forms to over half a million individuals due to a computer programming error, according a new government report.
The report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on Tuesday inspected the interim results of the IRS’s verification of Obamacare’s Premium Tax Credits, which were created to assist low or medium-income individuals and families to purchase health insurance in the marketplace.
DetailsThe price of the most popular health plans sold through Maryland’s insurance exchange will jump, on average, by about one quarter next year, fueling questions about whether coverage under the Affordable Care Act will remain affordable in the state and elsewhere.
The 26 percent average increase in monthly premiums are for CareFirst plans, which cover three-fourths of the state residents who have bought insurance under the federal health-care law. The price jump, scheduled for January, is among rate changes that the state’s insurance regulators have approved for plans sold to individual families and small businesses.
DetailsPhysician-owned hospitals are often vilified in America’s health care system, accused of siphoning the most profitable operations away from other hospitals while leaving them with the sicker and poorer patients. Congress has banned new ones from opening.
But an independent study released Wednesday argues physician-owned hospitals have gotten a bad rap.
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