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Tag: Affordable Care Act

Obamacare Enrollment Reached 7.3 Million People in August

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About 7.3 million people had paid for medical coverage and were enrolled in health plans sold through new Obamacare insurance exchanges on Aug. 15, the administration said.

The figure, announced by Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is 9 percent lower than the government’s estimate in May that 8 million had signed up for Obamacare plans. That estimate didn’t reflect how many people had paid their premiums and were actually covered by health insurance. The number has been long sought by Republican lawmakers who oppose the law.

Tavenner released the new figure at a hearing yesterday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington, where Republicans opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act peppered her with questions about the security of the insurance website and the destruction of e-mails she wrote before the site opened for business.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

360,000 Obamacare Enrollees At Risk Of Losing Subsidies

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More than 360,000 individuals enrolled in health insurance via the Obamacare exchanges must provide federal authorities with updated information about their incomes by Sept. 30, or risk losing the subsidies that cut the cost of their coverage, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Monday.

Federal authorities will begin contacting 279,000 households, representing 363,000 individuals, on Monday to urge them to provide additional information about how much money they make because the figures submitted in their Obamacare subsidies applications don’t match federal tax records, said Andy Slavitt, the principal deputy administrator of the Medicare and Medicaid agency, which also oversees the health insurance exchanges. More than 8 million people enrolled into private health insurance plans via the Obamacare exchanges during the six-month sign-up period that began last October, and 85 percent received subsidies.

Read the full report here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

Obamacare to Kick Out 115,000 Lacking Residency Proof

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About 115,000 people who signed up for Obamacare and may not be legal residents of the U.S. will lose their insurance coverage at the end of the month, the government said.

After spending months trying to coax 966,000 people who enrolled in coverage to provide documents proving their legal status, the government said it had received information from about 851,000 of them. Undocumented immigrants aren’t allowed to use new government-run health exchanges to buy insurance.

Another 363,000 people who still haven’t properly shown their incomes may see increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs if they don’t provide documentation by Sept. 30. The government uses income levels to set subsidies that help people buy insurance.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

Companies Race to Adjust Health-Care Benefits as Affordable Care Act Takes Hold

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Large businesses expect to pay between 4 and 5 percent more for health-care benefits for their employees in 2015 after making adjustments to their plans, according to employer surveys conducted this summer.

Few employers plan to stop providing benefits with the advent of federal health insurance mandates, as some once feared, but a third say they are considering cutting or reducing subsidies for employee family members, and the data suggest that employees are paying more each year in out-of-pocket health care expenses.

The figures come from separate electronic surveys given to thousands of mid- to large-size firms across the country by Towers Watson, the National Business Group on Health and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, consulting groups that engage with businesses on health insurance issues.

Bracing themselves for an excise tax on high-cost plans coming in 2018 under the Affordable Care Act, 81 percent of employers surveyed by Towers Watson said they plan to moderately or significantly alter health-care benefits to reduce their costs.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

Don’t Just Replace Obamacare—Replace the Great Society

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Given that I’ve probably published more articles critical of Obamacare than anyone alive, I’m often asked to speak to conservative audiences about our new health law. Last month, I was at the big grassroots confab of Americans for Prosperity, the Defending the American Dream Summit. I asked the packed house, “How many of you are on Medicare?” More than half the audience raised their hands. “Guess what?” I responded. “You’re all on single-payer health care.”

The stunned looks on their faces reinforced one of the most important aspects of our present health care debate. While conservatives fret about the possibility that Obamacare may be a Trojan horse for single-payer government-run health care, we usually forget that more than 90 million Americans are already on single-payer health care: those who get coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration.

And you don’t need to be a fan of dark conspiracy theories to believe that “Affordable Care Act” expands single-payer health care in America. It’s right there in Title II of the law, under which Obamacare substantially expands Medicaid.

Many conservatives believe that we had a free-market health care system in America, until Obamacare was signed into law. But that’s not true. The government takeover of our health care system didn’t happen in 2010. It happened in 1965, when LBJ shepherded through Congress the amendments to the Social Security Act that became known as Medicare and Medicaid.

Read the full report here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.