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The McCarran-Ferguson Act that created that antitrust exemption for the health insurance industry has been repealed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).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 […]
Group Health Insurance Tax Credit in Indiana
The Internal Revenue Service has released a new summary of tax credits created by recent legislation that impact small businesses, including the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) small business health insurance premium tax credit and the federal COBRA subsidies. The new summary Web page consolidates many of the IRS’ tax credit resources […]
Indiana COBRA Subsidy Expires
As of June 1st 2010 the COBRA Subsidy has expired. The program provided individuals who involuntarily lost their employer-sponsored health insurance benefits with a 15-month 65% subsidy of their COBRA health insurance premium. Going forward all new COBRA Eligible people will have to pay the entire premium. All eligible individuals that are still in […]
Golden Rule Will No Longer Offer Stand Alone Children’s Policy
This is the first result of a carrier telling the Federal Government we just won’t sell that product anymore. As of Sept 23rd 2010 of this year all Children under 19 will be eligible for guaranteed Issue on a stand alone health plan. This means they can not be declined or pre-x. Golden Rule which […]
