Recent Articles

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is urging Congress to ratify a mechanism that he says would give states an avenue to exempt themselves from the Affordable Care Act.

But critics of the plan have said the plan could jeopardize the health care of people who receive other forms of federal health care benefits, including more than 450,000 seniors in Kansas on Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly.

I’m sure most of you already know this, but Medicaid expansion–a critical component of Obamacare–is an abject disaster. In Virginia, almost a quarter of doctors aren’t accepting new Medicaid recipients–and those already enrolled into this government-run health care program experienced no improvement in care.

A coalition of K Street health giants are teaming up to fight the ObamaCare tax on high-cost insurance plans known as the “Cadillac tax.”

The newly launched campaign, called the Alliance to Fight the Forty, includes more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, insurance plans and unions including Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Laborers International Union.

Should a leading cardiologist be excluded from a panel creating clinical treatment guidelines for heart disease if in treating patients she has reached strong conclusions about how to treat heart disease and thus may “bias” the panel’s conclusions? Is a physician crooked if he accepts lunch, a baseball cap or a sticky-note pad from a drug rep? And is the credibility of scientists who develop a new pharmaceutical or device irredeemably compromised if their research is sponsored or funded by those industries?

District residents who want to purchase individual insurance plans on the city’s health exchange will have fewer options next year.

In fact, individuals searching for more flexibility than that offered by health maintenance organizations will have just one carrier to choose from — and the cost for some of its plans may jump by double digits.

For a Southern state where President Barack Obama is deeply unpopular and Republicans dominate federal elections, Kentucky stands out for having created a well-regarded health exchange and having expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. That dynamic will be put to the test in November’s gubernatorial election.

Get Covered Illinois, the state Obamacare exchange, which has been housed in the governor’s office, will be moving to the Illinois Department of Insurance on Aug. 1.

The announcement comes one day after the exchange confirmed plans to lay off most of its employees on July 31.

The Obama administration issued new rules on Friday that allow closely held for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby Stores to opt out of providing women with insurance coverage for contraceptives if the companies have religious objections.

Women enrolled in such health plans would still be able to get birth control at no cost, the administration said. Insurers would pay for contraceptive services, but the payments would be separate from the employer’s health plan.

The Obama administration on Friday set final rules for contraception coverage in workers’ health insurance plans, putting in place rules that are unlikely to satisfy some religious employers who object to birth control.

The cost of covering people who qualified for Medicaid as part of the federal health law was significantly higher than expected in 2014, federal actuaries said Friday.

Adults who became eligible for Medicaid as a result of the health law’s expansion of the program to include most low-income Americans incurred average medical costs of $5,517, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services office of the actuary said.