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Category: Cosby Insurance Group

State-Run Health Insurance Exchanges See Successful Enrollments

Simpler design, thorough testing avoid many woes of federal website.

Rigorous testing and an emphasis on simplicity helped several state-run health insurance exchanges avoid many problems that bedeviled the launch of the federal government’s exchange.

Excluding Medicaid enrollments, public health insurance marketplaces operated by 14 states and the District of Columbia enrolled about 30% of people who were determined to be eligible for an exchange-based health plan through November, far outpacing the federal enrollment rate of 9% across 36 states, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ latest report on exchange performance.

Read the full report here.

 

 

 

A Quicktake On Health Insurance Exchanges

The fate of Obamacare hinges on the success or failure of its new online shopping centers where people can sign up for coverage, dubbed Health Benefit Exchanges by the 2010 Affordable Care Act and Health Insurance Marketplaces by the Obama administration. The idea was to create an Expedia for medical coverage instead of airplane tickets, where insurance companies compete to offer affordable plans, mainly to those who don’t get insurance at work. The big question has always been whether the exchanges will attract enough healthy young people to offset the cost of older or sicker enrollees — even though for months that was put on hold as the government struggled to get the botched federal website to work.

Read the full report here.

 

An Obamacare Remedy For Some (But Not All) Small Businesses Without Exchange Access

The Obama administration has introduced another temporary fix for the troubled rollout of the health care law, granting special access to tax breaks for some — but not all — small firms that are not served by the new government-run health insurance marketplace.

Treasury Department officials recently announced that tax credits available to firms that buy coverage through the government’s new health care exchanges will also be made available to employers who buy insurance through the private market, but only in certain counties of Wisconsin and Washington state, where not a single insurance company elected to sell small-business plans through Healthcare.gov.

Read the full report here.

An Obamacare Remedy For Some (But Not All) Small Businesses Without Exchange Access

The Obama administration has introduced another temporary fix for the troubled rollout of the health care law, granting special access to tax breaks for some — but not all — small firms that are not served by the new government-run health insurance marketplace.

Treasury Department officials recently announced that tax credits available to firms that buy coverage through the government’s new health care exchanges will also be made available to employers who buy insurance through the private market, but only in certain counties of Wisconsin and Washington state, where not a single insurance company elected to sell small-business plans through Healthcare.gov.

Read the full report here.

Health Care Changes To Watch For In 2014

Beginning January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act was in full force, as millions of uninsured Americans either now have health coverage or will get it this year.

But experts say that’s just one of many changes to watch for in 2014, including how the law will affect elections, what the states will decide about Medicaid expansion, and what insurers will do to react to their quickly changing demographics.

  • The health care industry believes the law is here to stay, one analyst says
  • Medicaid and its expansion could drive innovation and cost containment
  • More than 2 million Americans now have new private health insurance

Read the full report here.