According to three new studies, the health law has in its first year reduced the number of uninsured adults by between 8 million and 11 million, and the majority of enrollees report satisfaction with their plans. The numbers don’t all match, and health care experts say they’re not precise enough to give more than a general idea of the trend. However, millions of people who didn’t have health insurance before the Affordable Care Act have gained it since last fall.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its Medicaid Enrollment Report for April, 2014. As of the end of April, 6 million more individuals were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as compared to the period before the initial open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act started in October, 2013. That includes 1.1 million additional people enrolled in April as compared to March in the 48 states that reported data for both April and March.
In its latest April 2014 report on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced that it is no longer possible to project the overall fiscal impact of the health care law.
The HHS OIG released a Special Fraud Alert addressing compensation paid by laboratories to referring physicians and physician group practices (collectively, physicians) for blood specimen collection, processing and packaging, and for submitting patient data to a registry or database.
And speaking of MedPAC, each year the Commission releases a June report advising Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program including broader changes in health care delivery and the market for health care services. The latest June report focuses on making the Medicare program more consistent by reforming Medicare payment models, risk adjustment payments, primary care service payments, and select condition payments.
Monteith Illingworth and Chris Abbate both have small public relations firms in Manhattan. Both offer their employees health coverage through Oxford Health, a division of insurance giant United Healthcare. Both faced double-digit premium hikes last year. And both considered hitting the eject button to buy coverage from the New York State of Health, the new insurance marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act.
If you offer it, will they come? Insurers and some U.S. senators have proposed offering cheaper, skimpier "copper" plans on the health insurance marketplaces to encourage uninsured stragglers to buy. But consumer advocates and some policy experts say that focusing on reducing costs on the front end exposes consumers to unacceptably high out-of-pocket costs if they get sick. The trade-off, they say, may not be worth it.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued final regulations on the small business health care tax credit under Health Care Reform, which include information on the requirement to purchase health insurance coverage through the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Marketplace.
A federal program designed to allow certain safety net hospitals and clinics to save money on drug purchases is under fire from critics who say the facilities are using that money to pad profits rather than help patients.
Nearly six in 10 Americans who bought insurance for this year through the health law’s online marketplaces were previously uninsured—most for at least two years, according to a new survey that looks at the experiences of those most affected by the law.
