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.
Overall healthcare spending among patients who get their health insurance from an employer grew at a tepid rate in 2014, but spending on prescription drugs jumped significantly, stemming almost exclusively from pricey hepatitis C drugs. The latest report from the Health Care Cost Institute called out three hepatitis C drugs—Johnson & Johnson’s Olysio and Gilead ...
With the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period to begin in less than two weeks, federal officials are racing to fix new features of HealthCare.gov that are supposed to make it easy for consumers to find insurance plans that cover their doctors and prescription drugs. The open enrollment period will start on schedule on ...
Two years into the grand experiment of setting up Nevada’s first health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, the state is banking on one hard-earned prize after surviving its tumultuous launch: normalcy. The switch to a hybrid health exchange last year paid off for the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange in the form of ...
When the health insurance marketplaces open on Sunday, consumers shopping for 2016 coverage may encounter steeper premium increases than last year and more plans that offer no out-of-network coverage. According to an analysis released Monday evening by the Health and Human Services Department, the cost of the second-lowest silver plan in states using the federal ...
When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford. His ...
The administration unveiled HealthCare.gov 3.0 on Sunday, saying customers will find a sleeker, easier-to-use website if they log on ahead of Obamacare’s third round of sign-ups. Setting a high bar for the portal that famously crashed in fall 2013, officials said the website that serves 38 states is 40 percent quicker than last year and ...
Tens of thousands of people with modest incomes are at risk of losing health insurance subsidies in January because they did not file income tax returns, federal officials and consumer advocates say. Under federal rules, anyone who receives an insurance subsidy must file a tax return to verify that the person was eligible and received ...
Sometimes Jane Blumenfeld feels that if she were in prison, she would have a better chance at getting lifesaving drugs to treat her liver disease. Blumenfeld is one of 33,160 people in California who have chronic hepatitis C infection, a liver disease caused by a virus most commonly spread through an exchange of blood. Up ...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned Friday that gaps in ObamaCare are clearing the way for redundant payments and fraud. The federal watchdog found that some people have duplicate coverage, meaning that they are enrolled both in Medicaid and in private coverage through the law’s marketplaces. The report said that means that the government could ...
The Obama administration said many consumers will see noticeable premium increases when buying health coverage on insurance exchanges in 2016, acknowledging for the first time what many health-care experts had predicted. Federal officials said Monday that the price of the second-lowest-cost midrange “silver plan”—a key metric for premiums around the country—will increase by 7.5% on ...