Compliance
This section focuses on health care compliance and regulations – both national and state – including the ACA. It includes changes in health care law, regulation, and court decisions and their impact on health insurance professionals, employers, and individuals.
From the beach party movies of the 1960s to the hippies of the 1970s and Silicon Valley’s baby billionaires today, California has long projected a youthful ambiance. That’s about to change in a big way. The aging of California’s huge post-World War II baby-boom generation, combined with plummeting birth and immigration rates, means the Golden ...
Obama administration officials, urging people to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, have trumpeted the low premiums available on the law’s new marketplaces. But for many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: ...
In a recent interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) signaled a need for change in the House leadership, saying he will redesign the job and return the House to “regular order.” Despite his stated desire for change, the top issues Ryan plans to address — tax reform and ...
Most of those eligible for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are failing to claim them, according to a new study. Researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute estimated that more than 24 million people were eligible for ObamaCare tax credits last year. By March, only 41 percent of ...
On Tuesday, the Joint Commission recognized more than 1,000 hospitals in California and other states as “Top Performers” for achieving high performance on key quality measures, the Biloxi Sun Herald reports (Biloxi Sun Herald, 11/16). The fifth-annual “Top Performer on Key Quality Measures” list was included in the organization’s 2015 annual America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality ...
Companies’ health care costs in 2015 rose at the lowest rate in at least 20 years, a report out Thursday shows, but workers’ share of costs continue to skyrocket. The average health care rate increase for mid-sized and large companies was 3.2% this year, the lowest since the consulting firm Aon started tracking it in 1996. Despite this, ...
The picture of health insurance sold on the exchanges for 2016 is becoming clearer: Premiums are rising at a faster pace than the previous year, and insurers are gradually ditching broader networks. This comes on top of the trend for many exchange plans to have high deductibles and out-of-pocket obligations. Monthly premiums for the lowest-priced ...
A new poll suggests widespread support for a measure headed for the 2016 ballot that would cap prescription drug prices paid by state programs. The California Drug Price Act would prohibit the state from using taxpayer money to pay more for any prescription drug than the amount paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. ...
More than 540,000 people selected a health insurance plan through the federal ObamaCare marketplace in the first week of this year’s sign-up period, the Obama administration announced Thursday. “It’s a solid start and I’m pleased with the consumer engagement we’ve seen over this last week,” Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews ...
If you work at a business with 50 or fewer employees, watch out for grandma this year. By that, we mean if the company has a “grandmothered” health plan, you may be in for some changes in 2016. Grandmothered is the term insurance agents and brokers have been using for pre-Obamacare policies that were allowed ...