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.
WASHINGTON — Doctors and hospitals are stepping up their criticism of proposed health insurance company mergers. In a new study to be released on Tuesday, the American Medical Association says that most insurance markets in the United States are dominated by a few companies and would become even more concentrated with a plan by Anthem ...
WASHINGTON — The CEO who pulled off the first major insurance company merger agreement of the summer also achieved what many executives might think impossible: He raised his company’s minimum wage, announced plans to up its contribution to workers’ health care and watched the stock soar by nearly 30% since January. But Aetna’s Mark Bertolini is used ...
Sutter Health Plus, the HMO health plan of Sacramento-based Sutter Health, has joined CaliforniaChoice and will offer 12 small group plan designs later this year. Orange-based CaliforniaChoice is a private exchange for employer groups and employees. Sutter recently received approval to join CaliforniaChoice from the state Department of Managed Health Care. Sutter said brokers and ...
The last major piece of President Barack Obama’s health care law could raise costs for thrifty consumers as well as large corporations and union members when it takes effect in 2018. The so-called Cadillac tax was meant to discourage extravagant coverage. Critics say it’s a tax on essentials, not luxuries. It’s getting attention now because ...
White House budget director Shaun Donovan called for a “more aggressive strategy” to thwart improper government payments to doctors, hospitals and insurance companies in a previously undisclosed letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell earlier this year. Government health care programs covering millions of Americans waste billions of tax dollars every year ...
As health care costs rise a bit faster than recent years, look for more health plans offered by employers and on public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act to pare their lists of doctor and hospital choices for 2016. Health insurers are already disclosing plans to maintain their business on government run exchanges under the ...
Nevada’s health insurance co-op will be closing down on January 1 next year. The co-op was established through the Affordable Care Act and serves as a non-profit insurance organization that is meant to provide consumers with more options when it comes to affordable coverage. The problem, however, is that the co-op has struggled to meet ...
About 340,000 California residents ages 65 and older have incomes below the federal poverty level, but many more likely need assistance in paying for medical care, food and other expenses,according to a brief released Monday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, KPCC’s “KPCC News” reports. Details of Brief The federal poverty level in ...
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers hope to tackle major issues in the state’s health care program for the poor over the next two weeks, starting with how to ensure the state doesn’t lose $1 billion in federal funding. The potential billion-dollar loss comes as critics say Medi-Cal is already struggling to meet the needs of the ...
WASHINGTON — More than 15 years have passed since this small a share of Americans didn’t get medical care they needed because of the cost, a new federal government report reveals. During the first three months of 2015, 4.4 percent of Americans surveyed said they went without health care at some point in the past ...