Los Angeles Times by Noam Levey –

March 17, 2014:

More than 5 million people have now signed up for health insurance on marketplaces created by President Obama’s healthcare law, thanks to a surge in enrollment over the last two weeks, the Obama administration announced Monday.

The quickening pace of sign-ups confirms that many Americans are using the new marketplaces as a March 31 deadline approaches for getting coverage this year.

The http://www.incredibleblogs.com/ latest figures indicate that roughly 1 million people enrolled during the last two weeks, surpassing the total for all of February.

If the pace continues, the Obama administration may come close to registering 6 million sign-ups in the first year that Americans are able to get guaranteed health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

That would still fall short of the

goal of 7 million that administration officials had hoped to reach before the botched rollout of the new law last fall.

How many people have actually paid for the health insurance plans they have selected remains uncertain.

Administration officials have not released data on payments. Unofficial estimates from insurance companies and some state-run marketplaces suggest that as many as 20% of consumers in some markets have yet to pay their premiums, although some of those may not yet have been billed.

Nonetheless, 6 million sign-ups would mark an important accomplishment for the health law’s supporters, who feared that the marketplaces might collapse after the disastrous launch of the HealthCare.gov website in October.

“As this historic open enrollment period enters its final weeks, millions of Americans are finding quality, affordable coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act,” Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose agency is overseeing the marketplaces, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Drawing on the experience of previous government health programs, the administration and many outside experts had long predicted a rush to sign up for coverage during the final few weeks. In particular, they have predicted that some groups, including young people and Latinos, whose participation in the marketplaces so far has lagged behind others’, increasingly would sign up as the deadline approached. The administration did not release a demographic breakdown Monday for the latest enrollments.

The state-based marketplaces — a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare — enable Americans who do not get health coverage through work to select among plans that offer at least a basic set of benefits. The plans cannot turn away sick

people.

Consumers who make less than four times the federal poverty level, or about $94,000 for a family of four, qualify for government subsidies to offset the cost of their premiums.

The Washington Post by Jason Millman –

March 14, 2014:

The Obama administration is requiring health plans in Obamacare insurance marketplaces to include a more robust offering of care providers in 2015 after some early backlash over limited http://skylitecellars.com/ networks in the health care law”s first year.

Health plans selling on the federal marketplaces in 2015 must include 30 percent of area “essential community providers,” which are usually health centers and other hospitals serving mostly low-income patients. That”s up from a 20 percent requirement in 2014, the first year of expanded overage under the health care law.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the marketplaces, will also take a much more

active role in reviewing health plan networks. CMS, which outlined the new standards in a Friday night letter to insurers, will evaluate whether the plans include enough access to hospitals, primary care doctors, mental health providers and oncologists.

The updated standards came after a Friday interview in which President Barack Obama acknowledged that pressure to keep down costs could mean consumers may not have access to their choice of doctor.

“You may find out US Casinos that network is more homepage expensive than another network, then you have to make choices in terms of what’s right for your family,” Obama told WebMD. “Do you want to save on costs, or do you want to save on convenience?”

A senior administration official defended the health law’s standards in a Friday afternoon statement.

“What is what true before the health law is true today insurers have always made decisions about which providers and doctors are in their networks – that won’t change,” the official said. “What is different now is the Affordable Care Act marks the first time that federal law requires insurance plans to offer adequate networks of doctors, including mental health practitioners, pharmacies, hospitals, and community providers. Americans can now choose between different types of

plans with different networks to find a plan that best meets their needs.”

CMS late Friday night also released a slew of new standards related to the http://mccallssf.com/ insurance marketplaces, also known as exchanges. For instance, the agency issued new rules related to in-person Obamacare assisters, known as navigators. It also builds on small business insurance marketplaces, which have face several delays in the law”s rollout.

CMS also said it will excuse insurers” administrative spending for costs stemming from the failed roll out of Healthcare.gov. The health law requires insurers to provide rebates to customers if they spend more than 20 percent of premium dollars on administrative costs, but CMS says it won”t count administrative costs related to the enrollment website”s turbulent launch.

March 7, 2014
Final Rules Released on Information Reporting for Employers and Insurers
On March 5, 2014, the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released final rules on two provisions: reporting health insurance coverage by large employers, and reporting minimum essential coverage by insurers and employers of self-insured plans. The guidance provides a streamlined process for reporting duplicate information required by both provisions – to both the IRS and respective employees.
While the first reporting will not be required until early 2016 for the 2015 calendar year, employers are encouraged to voluntarily report coverage information in 2015 for the 2014 calendar year.
Who must report to whom?
Employers with 50 or more full-time (including full-time equivalent) employees need to report all of the employees offered coverage throughout the calendar year to the IRS. Respectively, all employees named in this report must also be provided with a statement, and can simply be given a copy of the IRS form.
Minimum essential coverage must also be reported annually to both the IRS and any individual named in the report as having such coverage.
What information must be reported?
The final rules provide for a single, consolidated form to streamline the information being reported. Employers and insurers can complete their respective portions of the form and submit them separately. Large self-funded employers can complete both parts of the combined form for information reporting. This

cialis online form can be used for reporting to both the IRS and employees.
The forms have not yet been provided by the IRS, but will require information to help determine eligibility for the premium tax credit, such as:
• Employer information, including contact information and the number of full-time employees
• The lowest cost employee monthly premium for self-only coverage for minimum value coverage offered to the employee
• Information on each full-time employee to whom coverage was offered and identifying information, such as Social Security Number
The bottom half of the form includes information for insurers or self-insured employers to report, which will help administer compliance of the individual mandate and eligibility of premium tax credits:
• Information about the insurer or entity providing coverage, including contact and other business information
• Which individuals are enrolled, identifying information of those individuals, and the months in which they are enrolled
Special rules to further simplify
Special rules have been provided to further simplify reporting and offer transitional relief for employers that provide a “qualifying offer” to any of their full-time employees. A qualifying offer is two-fold:

1) offering an employee self-only coverage that meets minimum value (60% of costs) and provides self-only coverage at a cost of no more than 9.5% of the Federal Poverty Level, and 2) offering coverage for the employee’s family, including spouses and children.
• Large employers can take advantage of simplified reporting obligations when they extend qualifying offers to employees for all 12 months of the year. They can report basic employee identification data and the fact that they received

a full-year qualifying offer. These employers can also give the named employees a copy of that notice or a standard statement confirming the full-year qualifying offer.
• Large employers who extend a qualifying offer to employees for fewer than 12 months of the year can use a code to report to both the IRS and the named employees. This code indicates that the qualifying offer was made for each of those months.
• A phased-in option for 2015 is available for large employer who can certify they have made a “qualifying offer” to at least 95 percent of their full-time employees and their families (spouses and children). These employers will have simplified reporting method for their entire employee population, and can provide employees a standard statement regarding the coverage offered and potential eligibility for premium tax credits.
• Large employers that can certify they have offered affordable minimum value coverage to at least 98% of the employees named in the report do not have to identify full-time status.
Can employee statements be provided electronically?
The regulations do allow for statements to be provided electronically, but only if an employee agrees in writing to receive them electronically. The electronic statement and consent must satisfy strict requirements and an employee must be permitted to withdraw consent.
When are the first reports and employee statements due?
The first reports to the IRS will be required no later than March 1, 2016 for 2015 calendar-year coverage (February 28 is a Sunday). However, if the report is filed electronically, it will be due no later than March 31, 2016.
The first statements to employees will be required no later than January 31, 2016 for the 2015 calendar year.
For more information, cialis online cheap review the Treasury Fact Sheet.
We encourage you to bookmark Cigna’s health care reform website, InformedOnReform.com, where we will update information as future guidance and final rules are released.

At the same http://www.whereslloyd.com/cls time, HHS released a separate Insurance Standards Bulletin that extends a transition relief policy for canceled health plans for two

additional years. This extended transition relief, which applies for policy years beginning on or before Oct. 1, 2016, gives health insurance issuers the option of renewing policies for current enrollees without adopting Ladbrokes, for instance, took way too lengthy already to merely provide affiliate monitoring for his or her mobile casinos online affiliate marketers. all of the ACA”s market reforms for 2014, if permitted by their states. Thus, individuals and small businesses may be able to keep their non-ACA compliant coverage into 2017, depending on the plan homepage or policy year. Issuers that

renew coverage under the extended transition relief must, for each policy year, provide a notice to affected individuals and small businesses.

San Jose Mercury News by Tracy Seipel –

February 23, 2014:

Lowering costs by forcing doctors and insurers to compete for millions of new patients is a primary goal of the nation”s new health care law, but a group of gastroenterologists in the East Bay and internists near Chico are exposing a fissure in that plan.

There often aren”t enough doctors to go around.

In parts of the state, the shortage of doctors participating in California”s new insurance exchange is providing new leverage for medical providers to hold out for higher reimbursement rates from big insurance companies. And as a game of chicken unfolds behind the scenes between two powerful groups that are key to the law”s success, the insurers are often caving in to the doctors, raising concerns that the trend could catch on and drive up the price of health insurance premiums on the exchange.

Medical costs are the largest component of a health insurance premium, said Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross of California. And the higher those costs go, he said, “the higher the premium will likely be on the exchange in the future.”

Many doctors are upset about the discounted reimbursement rates that insurers have imposed on them to keep premiums low on the Covered California exchange. The new rates — as much as 30 percent lower than those paid by nonexchange plans — took effect Jan. 1, when the new health care plans of hundreds of thousands of Californians kicked in.

The number of doctors who have had their old rates restored is still small compared to the 58,000 physicians that Covered California says are participating in the new marketplace.

Whether these side deals will ultimately raise rates on the new exchange isn”t clear yet. But health care experts wonder what the trend portends for the success of the law, which depends on attracting hordes of consumers

to lower-priced insurance policies.

As more people

sign up for the expanded Medi-Cal program and private plans on Betsafe kasino tarjoaa tutun kattauksen laadukkaita NetEntin casinopeleja vahvistettuna muiden pelitoimittajien peleilla. the exchange, “there will be a surge in the demand for doctors,” said Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California.

But because there”s a fixed supply of physicians, he predicted, many doctors will be able to tell

the insurers: “Wait a second. You delivered us a promise, and I”m busier than ever, and you need me. But I don”t need to agree to a discount anymore.”

Central to the standoff are state regulations that require insurers to provide their customers access to primary care physicians within 15 miles or 30 minutes of their homes. Plans also are required to have a primary care physician-to-patient ratio of 1 to 2,000, and an overall physician-to-patient ratio of 1 to 1,200. If for some reason the health plan does not have a particular type of specialist, the plan must find such a provider.

In many cases, the winners in the doctor-insurer faceoff are physicians in rural regions, where health care services are scarce. But the table-turning has also surfaced in the Bay Area and other metropolitan regions.

“Most doctors want to take care of patients,” said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association, a lobbying group that represents about 40,000 of the state”s 104,000 licensed physicians. He”s also an internist who belongs to a 12-member group practice in Paradise, near Chico, that was able to reinstate its old fees with Blue Shield of California.

“But they have to make an individual choice based on whether they can afford to service those contracts,” Thorp said. “That is the reality.”

Blue Shield and Anthem Blue Cross, two of the four largest insurers offering Covered California plans, acknowledged that they are reinstating some old rates.

Blue Shield spokesman Steve Shivinsky said the insurer has restored rates for 1,400 California physicians, many of whom practice in rural areas, to ensure adequate medical care is available. Yet he said that”s still “a tiny fraction” of the majority of its 35,000 network physicians who signed new contracts to participate and agreed to accept discounted rates in exchange for more patient volume.

Dr. Mark Kogan, a San Pablo gastroenterologist, is one of the physicians who used the law of supply and demand to make the case for higher rates.

Along with 18 colleagues at Northern California Gastroenterology Consultants, he already sees plenty of patients. So when Blue Shield last year offered the group more business from new Covered California enrollees — but at 30 percent less — the group declined.

“We basically told them, “We cannot do that,” ” Kogan recalled. “We would lose money by seeing those patients.”

That put Blue Shield in a bind. Without access to those 19 gastroenterologists who work out of seven East Bay offices, where would its subscribers go?

By mid-January, Blue Shield backed down and agreed to pay the group of specialists its current rates if the doctors would take on the insurer”s exchange patients.

The issue of discounted fees surfaced at Thursday”s Covered California board meeting after Kim Griffin, chairwoman of Medical Office Managers of the Peninsula, told the board in a letter that because some insurers are discounting fees for exchange customers, “many of us have opted out.”

That doesn”t surprise Thorp and Kogan, who say there is a misconception among the public that access to more patients means more money.

“If you are pricing a service for less than it costs you to provide it,” Thorp said, “you cannot make that up in volume.”