Industry Updates
This broad category includes articles concerning health insurance costs, carrier and health plan news, changing benefits technology, and surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others on employee benefits.
UnitedHealth Group shook the ground under the Affordable Care Act market for individual health insurance when it said it was considering withdrawing altogether after a bad experience this year.
The latest turmoil in health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act has emboldened advocates on both sides of the political spectrum, providing ammunition to conservatives who want to shrink the federal role and liberals who want to expand it.
California lawmakers are staring down a $1.1 billion hole in next year’s health budget after failing to come up with a way to replace the state’s “managed care organization tax” on health insurance plans that serve Medi-Cal managed care recipients.
The Senate on Thursday fast-tracked a House-passed effort to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used a procedural move to let the House bill skip over the Senate’s committee process and be placed directly on the Senate calendar, where it could be teed up for action on the ...
Officials with Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) administration say that efforts to rework the expiring managed care organization tax are ongoing, Capital Public Radio’s “KXJZ News” reports (Orr, “KXJZ News,” Capital Public Radio, 11/19). Background The current MCO tax expires in June 2016. In July, federal officials said they would not reauthorize the formula California uses. ...
UnitedHealth Group’s announcement this week that it may pull out of Affordable Care Act exchanges is not expected to have much of an impact on Covered California, experts said, but the move could have serious repercussions in other exchanges. Although the for-profit company hasn’t been a major player in most exchanges and is a late-comer ...
The biggest U.S. health insurer said it has suffered major losses on policies sold on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges and will consider withdrawing from them, adding to worries about the future of the marketplaces at the heart of the Obama administration’s signature health law. The disclosure by UnitedHealth Group Inc., UNH 0.92 % which ...
Covered California has signed up more than 34,000 new individuals for health benefits since open enrollment started Nov. 1, exchange officials said Thursday. That’s about 2,000 a day and “very strong enrollment” for so early in the sign-up period that extends through Jan. 31, said executive director Peter Lee. But there’s a cloud on the ...
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 ...
Three years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature enacted a major overhaul of the system that compensates workers for job-related injuries and illnesses. Senate Bill 863, backed by employers and labor unions, affected many specific aspects of the system but was aimed largely at reducing medical costs and redirecting savings into cash benefit increases ...