High-Risk Insurance Pools Cost More
Health care reforms high-risk insurance pools will have difficult choices ahead. The CBO Director Doug Elmendorf laid out the stark choices facing a program. The $5 billion dollars will run out in before 2013. To extend the coverage to 600,000 more Americans would cost $5 -$10 billion more than estimated. Health and Human Services Secretary […]
Health Care Reform Impacts Indiana Maternity Coverage
Starting in the fall, all new health plans must cover certain preventive screenings and other services for pregnant women at no additional cost to the patient. Those include folic acid supplements, which reduce the risk of neural tube defects in developing fetuses, and counseling to help pregnant women stop smoking. Medicaid will also begin to […]
Keeping Grandfathered Health Plans?
The Grandfathered clause of the new health care reform gave individuals and group plans the right to keep their current plans. To keep that grandfathered status you can not make any changes to the plan. So that means you can not raise the deductible or coinsurance to lower the premium. From a employer standpoint the […]
American Community Business and Golden Rule for Indiana
On April 8, 2010, the Michigan Office of Insurance Regulation’s (“OFIR”) Commissioner Ken Ross obtained an order from a Michigan Circuit Court placing American Community Mutual Insurance Company (“American Community”) into rehabilitation and naming Ross as the company’s rehabilitator. Last Wednesday, the court approved a Transition Plan Agreement submitted by the OFIR which provides 42,000 […]
The Repeal Of The McCarran-Ferguson Act
The McCarran-Ferguson Act that created that antitrust exemption for the health insurance industry has been repealed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This will prevent the health and medical malpractice insurers from being exempt from antitrust regulation. An example of how the health industry has had problem is in a case in […]
Indiana Modification Waiver
This is a very important provision that can give states more flexibility to do things differently than the way they are specifically addressed in the legislation. With a waiver, if states can demonstrate the ability achieve an objective in a different way, the waiver is approved. For example, in the case of tax credits only being available […]
Half Of Employer Health Care Plans May Lose Their Grandfathered Status
The White House on Monday will issue new rules that strongly discourage employers from cutting health insurance benefits or increasing the costs of coverage to employees. The administration said this was just one goal of the legislation, allowing people to “keep their current coverage if they like it.” It acknowledged that some people, especially those […]
Enrollment Declines With Top Health Plans in 2009
Mark Farrah Associates (MFA), a leading provider of market data and intelligence solutions to the health care industry reported a huge decline in member ship among eight top health insurers: Aetna, CIGNA, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), Health Net, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint. Enrollment declines continued for most of the nation’s leading health […]
Medicare Physician Payment Cuts May Increase Cost Of Private Insurance
Right now there are a lot of people predicting that if the Medicare cuts are not fixed then health care providers will cost shift to private carriers. This means that if the 21% reduction in Medicare reimbursement is not fixed the hospitals will charge private insurance more money. I find this hard to believe. Hospitals can try to […]
White House Launchs PR Blitz for Health Care Reform
The White house is getting ready to launch a new campaign to sell the public on health care reform that was passed. This is going to be a difficult sell. Being a health insurance broker dealing with all types of health plans and I have major concerns about the reform. As of right now, I don’t know […]
