Compliance & Regulations
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.
Hospitals across Orange County, and nationwide, are reporting sharp to moderate increases in ER visits. And many of them attribute it to the millions of people who are newly insured on account of the health reform law.
Obamacare had a "Mission Accomplished" moment earlier this month. The California Department of Insurance announced that health care plans on Covered California would see premiums increase by 4.2 percent for 2015.
States and the federal government will spend at least $700 million this year to pay the tax for their Medicaid health plans. The three dozen states that use Medicaid managed care plans will give those insurers more money to cover the new expense.
Being a doctor in private practice today is more complicated than it used to be, with growing financial pressures, more government regulation, greater oversight by insurers, rapid developments in medicine and pressure to keep up with technology.
Next year, more corporate workers are likely to be offered high-deductible plans — sometimes known more benignly as consumer-directed plans.