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Two insurance carriers on the Obamacare exchange are attributing proposed double-digit premium increases to next year’s private-market alterations to the New Hampshire Medicaid program. Minuteman Health Inc. has requested rate increases ranging from 42 to 51 percent for next year, according to healthcare.gov. Maine Community Health Options asked for premium increases between 19 and 22 percent. Both companies attributed their proposed increases in part to the Premium Assistance Program, the name for the Medicaid expansion program that is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. Maine Community estimated that claims from the Medicaid patients will be 61 percent higher...

State ObamaCare exchanges are fast running out of cash because of higher-than-expected costs and lower-than-expected enrollment. In an attempt to keep their heads above water, many exchanges are considering combining some of their operations with those of other states — a tactic that may prove as difficult as setting up the exchanges in the first place and that raises the specter of fully nationalized health insurance.The Obama administration, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), disbursed about $5 billion in subsidies to states to get their exchanges up and running. After that, the exchanges were supposed to be...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Supreme Court ruling due in a few weeks could wipe out health insurance for millions of people covered by President Barack Obama's health care law. But it's Republicans — not White House officials — who have been talking about damage control. [snip] BAD TIMING [snip] HOUSE OF CARDS [snip] STICKER SHOCK FOR SELF-PAY CUSTOMERS [snip] REPUBLICANS TO THE RESCUE? [snip]

The “Affordable” Care Act may be looking for a new name in the near future. As Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are reporting, the next round of health care premium cost adjustments are coming down the pike, and you’ll never guess where things are heading. Okay… you probably guessed already. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Obamacare rates are about to shoot up, in some cases as much as 40%. The rate increases requested by insurance carriers vary state by state, but the overall picture is bad.“In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp....

The vast majority of people who bought health insurance through ObamaCare exchanges are satisfied with their plans, according to a new national survey.People overwhelmingly said they felt positively about their choices of doctors and hospitals and their copays for appointments and prescriptions, delivering good news for the Obama administration one year into the law's rollout.More surprisingly, that satisfaction also extended to people’s monthly premiums and annual deductibles, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.Sixty percent of ObamaCare customers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their monthly premium costs — more than people who bought coverage before the...

On the whole, the Affordable Care Act is working pretty well, getting more people insured and increasing the quality of insurance overall. But on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported an alarming development: Health insurers on many state exchanges are looking to boost their premiums a ridiculous amount in 2016. New Mexico's leading provider, for instance, is seeking a 51.6 percent hike, while Maryland's is seeking a 30.4 percent hike. (Insurers in other states, like Vermont and Indiana, are asking for minimal increases.) Libertarian and conservative outlets are, predictably, citing the rate hike as yet another Obamacare catastrophe. But it's...

Proposals set the stage for debate over federal health law’s impact. Major insurers in some states are proposing hefty rate boosts for plans sold under the federal health law, setting the stage for an intense debate this summer over the law’s impact. In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products. Moda Health, the largest insurer on the...

A number of states are quietly considering merging their healthcare exchanges under ObamaCare amid big questions about their cost and viability. Many of the 13 state-run ObamaCare exchanges are worried about how they’ll survive once federal dollars supporting them run dry next year. Others are contemplating creating multi-state exchanges as a contingency plan for a looming Supreme Court ruling expected next month that could prevent people from getting subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal exchange. The idea is still only in the infancy stage. It’s unclear whether a California-Oregon or New York-Connecticut health exchange is on the horizon. But...

At a recent White House science fair celebrating inventors, a Girl Scout who helped design a Lego-powered page-turning device asked President Obama what he had ever thought up or prototyped. Stumbling for an answer, he replied: “I came up with things like, you know, health care.” Ah, yes. “Health care.” Remember when the president’s signature Obamacare health insurance exchanges were going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, the remote control, jogger strollers, Siri, the Keurig coffee maker, driverless cars and Legos all rolled into one? The miraculous, efficient, cost-saving, innovative 21st-century government-run “marketplaces” were supposed to put the...

Denver -- The state's health exchange is looking at more than doubling the fee that insurers pass onto customers who buy policies. The Denver Post reports Connect for Health Colorado staff recommended the increase Monday as $177 million in federal startup grants come to a close and as insurance carriers prepare to submit their rate plans by May 29. If the health exchange board approves the 3.5 percent charge for premiums, the fee for a $4,000 yearly plan would go up by $84. Staff also recommended upping a monthly assessment charge for 1.2 million private insurance policies to bring in...

In a news story titled “Nearly half of Obamacare exchanges are struggling over their future,” The Washington Post reports the following: Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially, presenting state officials with an unexpected and serious challenge five years after the passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act. Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing...

(CNSNews.com) -- President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii is shutting down its state-based health care exchange, the Hawaii Health Connector (HHC), due to incurring debts and the unwillingness of state legislators to put more taxpayer money into the struggling operation, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Saturday.Established in 2011, the non-profit organization is Hawaii’s state-based health exchange for the President’s Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. There are currently about 37,000 Hawaiians enrolled in health care plans through the exchange, far short of the roughly 70,000 needed to raise enough money to sustain it, the article reports.Officials with the exchange released a report to its...

Hawaii state insurance exchange to shut down Hawaii Health Connector never achieved financial sustainability May 11, 2015 | By Brian Eastwood The Hawaii Health Connector will shut down operations on Sept. 30, InsuranceNewsNet reported. The exchange site will cease new enrollment this week, discontinue its outreach programs at the end of May and transfer its technology assets to the state by Sept. 30, the article said. The exchange's 37,000 enrollees can re-enroll on the federal Healthcare.gov exchange for the 2016 plan year. Hawaii Health Connector has faced financial problems from its inception. A report issued earlier this year found that...

Health-care experts call it D.C. insiderism at its worst. The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies. The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the...

The IRS cannot be sure that Americans who lacked health insurance last year have complied with Obamacare’s “individual mandate” penalty this tax season, according to an inspector general report Friday that pointed to a decision to delay proof-of-coverage forms from insurers and employers until 2016. Agency mangers told the Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration that a “business decision was made to not develop processes and procedures” to ensure compliance after it decided in 2013 to delay the pair of forms. The documents are sent to both filers and the IRS, allowing the federal government to cross-check what filers say...

Waste: After spending billions on state-run ObamaCare exchanges, the federal government is only now writing clear rules on how that money can be spent, while half of the exchanges head toward bankruptcy.

In 49 states, there are basically two options for public health insurance programs: Medicaid for the very poor, and subsidized private health insurance on the Affordable Care Act's exchanges for everyone else. Minnesota is the exception. Unlike every other state, it has a third option in the middle: MinnesotaCare. Created in the 1990s, MinnesotaCare covers people who earn too much money for Medical Assistance (Minnesota's Medicaid program) but not enough to qualify for MNsure, the state's health insurance exchange.

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R) said he’s “utterly appalled” by the Colorado Division of Insurance decision to cancel 190,000 health plans that don’t comply with Obamacare regulations — even though they have the authority to continue the old plans for another year under grandfathering rules announced last year. “Coloradans were promised by supporters of this healthcare law that if they liked their plans, they could keep their plans,” he said. “DOI should follow through on that promise, and prove that last year’s extension wasn’t simply an empty election year ploy to fool people into believing they were going to be...

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange call center in Spokane is so busy that staffing has been quadrupled, with the center receiving up to 10,000 calls a day. The problem is not enough of those callers are actually signing up for insurance. The state has enrolled 160,000 paying customers in ObamaCare exchange health plans but that's more than 50,000 short of goal, which has led to an extension of the enrollment deadline and a request that the Washington State Legislature fork over $125 million to fund the exchange. Republicans are angry because they were told the exchange would be self-sufficient by...

With all of the new bad news coming out this week from ObamaCare, here’s another horror story about the Healthcare.gov exchange from Utah that exemplifies the incompetence of government bureaucracy. One basic and nearly ubiquitous feature of health care — and indeed of family life — is the birth of children. Health insurance plans have made it simple to add children to family plans for decades, allowing new moms and dads to have the costs of childbirth covered ex post facto, as long as the covered individual notified the insurer within a set period of time, usually 30 days. Now,...