cmonfils | December 30, 2011
Jan. 1, 2014, may seem like a long time from now, but as states scramble to establish health insurance exchanges mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), that date constantly is on their minds.
Last week, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) released an update on how much progress states have made in setting up their exchanges. Some have thrown up their hands and said that they choose to let the federal government run their exchange. Some, despite their involvement in a lawsuit to block the federal healthcare reform law, are still moving forward with implementation. And others are politically supportive of the law and are currently developing their exchanges.
Category: Health Care Legislation, Health Insurance, PPACA |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 30, 2011
The end of the 2011 plan year brings about another opportunity to review group health plan compliance with Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requirements. This LawFlash describes year-end action items for group health plan sponsors and previews upcoming changes for 2013. This list is not exhaustive, but it is intended to serve as a reminder of items that plan sponsors should review and consider before the end of the year.
Category: Health Care Legislation, Plan Sponsor, PPACA |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 30, 2011
The Obama administration’s surprise announcement Friday that it planned to give states broad leeway to pick the benefits offered under the federal health care law offers yet another example of a gradualist approach to carrying out its signal domestic policy achievement.
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 29, 2011
Pandering to Republicans on health reform does not serve the American people. The Obama administration should know that by now.
When Congress was crafting the law, Democrats negotiated away a needed “public option” that would have allowed people to buy coverage from the government, similar to how Medicare works. It was an effort to win conservative support. But not a single Republican supported the final legislation. Americans paid the price by being required to purchase coverage from insurance companies.
Category: Health Care Legislation, HHS |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 29, 2011
One of the intriguing things about the 2012 election is how both President Obama and his Republican opponents believe that the Obama health care law will be a winning issue for them.
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 29, 2011
The individual mandate is the Affordable Care Act’s least popular provision and lies at the heart of the legal challenge to the law before the U.S. Supreme Court. But a new poll finds that public opinion can be swayed by how the mandate’s implications are described.
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
In response to the federal health reform law, now known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and separate state reform initiatives, some members of at least 45 state legislatures have proposed legislation to limit, alter or oppose selected state or federal actions. In general many of the opposing measures, in 2010 and 2011:
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would devote three days in late March to hearing arguments in challenges to the 2010 health care overhaul law. A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.
The court agreed to hear the case on Nov. 14, saying it would put aside five and half hours for arguments and specifying how much time it would devote to each of four issues. Monday’s announcement assigned those issues to particular days, giving a sense of the logical sequence in which the justices will approach them.
Category: Health Care Legislation, Supreme Court |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
Health insurance is a critical factor in making health care accessible to women. Women with coverage are more likely to obtain preventive, primary, and specialty care services, and have better access to many of the new advances in women’s health. Most of the 96 million women ages 18 to 64 have some form of coverage. However, the patchwork of different private sector and publicly-funded programs in the U.S. leaves one in five uninsured. The new health reform law includes several measures that will change the profile of women’s coverage between now and 2014 when the new law will be implemented.
Category: Health Care Legislation, Health Insurance |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
On December 16, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a bulletin addressing the agency’s approach to defining essential health benefits, which small group and individual health plans will be required to provide under health care reform. HHS proposes that essential health benefits be defined using a benchmark approach.
Category: Health Care Legislation, HHS |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
In a surprising move, the Department of Health and Human Services will not impose a uniform definition of “essential health benefits” (EHB) that individual and small group health insurance plans must provide in order to be offered on state exchanges starting in 2014.
Category: CHIP, Health Care Legislation, HHS, Medicaid, PPACA |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
Riding the Toronto subways in the early ’80s, nothing pleased me more than finding religious pamphlets – comic books, really – on the trains. Even though their content was predictable they were wildly entertaining, and best of all: They foretold the future.
Or someone’s idea of the future, anyway: one in which those who did not find salvation in Jesus Christ suffered eternal damnation. Being Jewish, I didn’t see how the text spoke to me. The illustrations, however, remain etched in my mind 30 years later, such was their power.
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
US states are being given more freedom and flexibility in the implementation of health reform as stipulated in the Affordable Care Act, which aims to make sure all US citizens have access to affordable, quality health insurance, according to a bulletin released by the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services).
Category: Health Care Legislation, HHS |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
While the debates over health care reform may have seemed endless to most people watching the battle on Capitol Hill last year, for small business owners, they were only the beginning. When President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, it put small business owners into a “hurry up and wait” status that won’t really be resolved until 2014.
Category: Health Care Legislation, PPACA |
No Comments »
Tags:
cmonfils | December 27, 2011
Should all Americans be required to have health insurance? ObamaCare said yes, and the issue is now central to the Republican presidential primary. Mitt Romney championed an individual mandate as governor of Massachusetts. Newt Gingrich once backed the idea too, egged on by several conservative think tanks, though he’s now opposed. Its constitutionality aside (that’ll be decided soon by the Supreme Court), is a mandate a good idea?
Category: Health Care Legislation |
No Comments »
Tags:
