The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a proposed rule to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that would create more options for annual health plan eligibility redeterminations in the Exchanges, (both Federally-facilitated and state-based) as well as add more requirements for re-enrollment notices. If enacted, the rule would impact consumers who are re-enrolling in a Qualified Health Plan (QHP) during the 2015 open enrollment period (November 15, 2014 – February 15, 2015).
Six states and the District of Columbia. will use their own money in 2015 to sustain the federal Medicaid pay raise to primary care doctors. The pay raise stems from a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that expands Medicaid fees for primary care to the same amount paid under Medicare. The states are Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Alabama, and Mississippi. Interestingly, Mississippi and Alabama did not participate in the Medicaid expansion under the ACA.
Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which finances about half the health program for seniors and the disabled, won’t run out of money until 2030, the program’s trustees said Monday. That’s four years later than projected last year and 13 years later than projected the year before the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
About 10.3 million Americans have gained insurance coverage since the full implementation of Obamacare last year, according to an analysis published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, done by Harvard researchers and published by the NEJM, was based on Gallup polling and data from the Department of Health and Human Services. It also estimated that the uninsured rate declined by 5.2 percentage points in the second quarter of 2014, or from 21 percent in September 2013 to 16.3 percent in April 2014. In particular, it found jumps in the insurance rates for Hispanics, blacks and young adults.
New enrollments in Obamacare's Medicaid expansion and other healthcare programs for the poor have reached 6.7 million people since the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms last year, the administration said on Friday. CMS says about 26.4 million children were enrolled in CHIP or Medicaid overall, and 56 percent of all enrollees in the programs are children.
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.
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.
