Nevada Watch
Featured news in this section focuses on Nevada, the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange (Nevada Health Link), the Nevada Division of Insurance (in the Department of Business and Industry), and actions by the state legislature affecting insurance brokers and clients.
The recent decision by Southwest Medical Associates to stop covering traditional Medicare patients in Southern Nevada makes 66-year-old Anne Zarate sick to her stomach.
Earlier this year, Nevada became one of the first states in the country to implement drug price regulations as legislation on the issue stalled at a national level. The pharma industry now has its response: a lawsuit alleging that the state’s new law violates the Constitution in four ways.
Nevada’s Medicaid program, caught in the political crossfire over rising health-care costs, is far different than the limited federal-state health insurance partnership for the “deserving poor” that President Lyndon Johnson unveiled in 1965.
SilverSummit Healthplan has agreed to fill Nevada's 14 "bare" counties that were slated to have no insurers on the ObamaCare exchanges next year.
“There’s only one reason why Medicaid was kept in that final version and that’s because of me,” Heller said at a talk in Las Vegas, according to the Nevada Independent.
The looming departure affects 31,496 Nevadans, according to figures provided by the the Nevada Division of Insurance. It also underscores the continued volatility of the insurance market amid uncertainty about how federal regulations may change health coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
A Republican, Heller had opposed the original draft legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare but he hadn’t declared how he’d vote on a straight repeal of the health care law.
Republican leaders were stung by another defeat Wednesday when the Senate rejected a repeal of the Obamacare law and its mandates on coverage, taxes and Medicaid expansion.
Nevadans who receive medical insurance through the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange could see the average proposed rate increase 38 percent for the individual market by 2018, according to a press release.
Senior advocates are blanketing the airwaves this week with a new ad blitz meant to convince Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., to stick with his stated opposition to the Senate GOP health-care bill.