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Like everyone, I'm eventually going to need to see a doctor. Something is eventually going to go wrong with me and I'll need someone to fix it. My employer's health insurance rates go up every year. And our president has spent the last five and a half years promising affordable health care...and that insurance rates would go down if we'd just enact this sweeping change to the medical system in America. It was with these facts in mind that I decided to see what rates I could get from Mr. Obama's vaunted "affordable Care Act" and its online presence, "Healthcare...

If you've tried to sign up online for health coverage under the problem-plagued Obamacare exchange, our sympathies. Many people have tried to create accounts and shop for insurance under the new law. Few have succeeded. Those that have enrolled have found that the system is prone to mistakes. Some applications have been sent to the wrong insurance company. Wait. It gets worse. Those who have managed to browse the marketplace have often been hit by sticker shock. Take Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner and single father from Carpentersville. He sought the same level of coverage on the exchange as he...

Nothing is more important for a startup burning through cash than winning customers and revenue. So problems with the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces, also known as exchanges, aren’t just an inconvenience. They’re a threat. Nobody is pushing the panic button. March 31, the end of enrollment, is several months away. Co-ops are well financed with federal loans. Evergreen holds enough capital to be in good shape even if it doesn’t reach what Beilenson calls “self-sustaining” membership of 15,000 or 20,000 in the first year, he said. But with few confirmed customers so far and no revenue, Evergreen and its...

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act eventually could cost the Aiken County School District from $300,000 to $400,000 a year, District Comptroller Tray Traxler told School Board members on Tuesday. Those costs are rough estimates based on the number of employees who may or could average 30 hours of service every week. Each employee formally added to the program could cost the District $3,000 to $6,000 annually as its contribution, depending on whether the employee has a child who qualifies. Probably the biggest headache for Traxler's department is the requirement that the District must provide continuous monitoring of such employees'...

Businesses across the nation, including the Pinellas County school district, are adjusting their health care plans to comply with the Affordable Health Care Act, but one variable may end up costing the school district millions: substitute teachers. By 2015, the act requires the school district to provide health care benefits to all employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Last school year, there were 1,798 part time employees, including substitute teachers, working in instructional and administrative positions, according to the school district. “We have substitutes that work on a regular basis and over a certain period of time...

Over the course of the week, the BizTimes editorial team attempted to log on to the website to learn more information about the new marketplaces. After running into several error messages on various attempts, we were eventually able to create an account, but were not able to fully log in to the online marketplace. Stephanie Smiley, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), said that she said she did not know of a single Wisconsin resident who had been able to sign up for health insurance at healthcare.gov. "So far, folks are getting caught up in the...

SAN FRANCISCO - One reason the Republicans are so adamantly against Obamacare, is that it's driving individual insurance premiums up. And with the law now kicking in, the bills are coming due. In looking into this, we talked to health insurance companies, and representatives of Covered California, agency implementing the Affordable Care Act in California. What they told us may be a bitter pill to swallow, for those who will pay more. Cynthia Jaynes thought her family would benefit from the Affordable Care Act. The author of several young adult books says her family will see a minimum 11 percent...

“The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!” the home page on the Health Care.gov website breezily announces, but for most of the 14.6 million people who have tried to log in over the last two weeks, that promise proved a chimera. Computer problems caused by a perfect storm of complexity, inadequacy, and opposition have plagued the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not as if there were no forecasts of impending disaster. The New York Times reported that “deadline after deadline was missed.” Over the last 10 months, while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius continued insisting that all was well, senior...

Is the Affordable Health Care Act making health care unaffordable for some people? Some customers of Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of Oregon’s largest insurance providers, say that's exactly what's happening. They say they are finding their health care plans are dramatically changing under the Affordable Care Act. “Policy holders are seeing almost double their monthly premiums,” said a KATU viewer named Larry in an email. He said his wife’s premium will increase by $300 under the Affordable Care Act. The issue, according to Regence spokesman Jared Ishkanian, is you’ll have to pay for those benefits even if you...

Obtaining health care is no laughing matter. Yet the only way to cope with practical implications of the Democrat-sponsored Affordable Care Act is comic relief. Would Democrats rather commit political suicide than try to fix massive flaws in a bungled rollout of a mangled law? Forget about delaying Obamacare for a year, perhaps we should delay it until Democrats can pass a critically scored sanity check. A divisive law, that few read, and that a thin majority shoved down our throats deserves the date it will eventually get with the electoral version of “death panels”. It is a monstrosity which...

Heritage Action For America, an influential conservative group, on Tuesday urged House Republicans to vote against their leaders' latest bill to fund the government and raise U.S. borrowing authority. The private group said that the legislation, which was scheduled to be voted on late on Tuesday, fails to "stop Obamacare's massive new entitlements from taking root." The group is warning lawmakers that it will look at their positions on this legislation in considering whether to encourage candidates to run against them in Republican primary campaigns next year.

Eleven million American adults with mental illnesses do not have health insurance, making it very difficult for them to get treatment. It is difficult for these Americans to get health insurance because their applications are often rejected due to their pre-existing condition of mental illnesses. Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act has many provisions that aim at trying to fix this problem. Here are some of the ways Obamacare is working to bridge the insurance gap that exists for adults with mental disorders:

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. Gist: Official from Michigan Department of Insurance cannot confirm that anyone has enrolled.

The Obama administration’s internal projections called for strong enrollment in the states in the first year of new health insurance markets, according to unpublished estimates obtained by The Associated Press. The draft, dated Sept. 20, broke down the figure of 7 million among states. It estimated the expected enrollment in California, for example, at 1. 3 million people in 2014. The estimate for Texas was 629,000 and for Florida, 477,000. The report estimated 340,000 people would enroll in Washington state, and 218,000 in New York.

A 59-year-old small business owner from Selbyville spent over seven hours between phone calls and the computer, but her patience earned her the distinction of being the first person from Delaware to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. When everything was done Baker said she found coverage for about $700 /month. She and her husband had been paying $1600/month. He now has his own insurance, which is written through a private carrier. Baker wouldn't describe the type of plan she eventually signed up for, but said she didn't qualify for subsidies.

Tirge Caps, a blogger at Daily Kos, says that in 2013, pre-Obamacare, he pays $150 a month for a health insurance plan from Kaiser. His wife pays $168. However, under Obamacare, their rates will nearly double, to $284 and $302, respectively: Read the comments section to see how Tirge’s compadres reacted to his situation.

It may be one of the most serious missteps of the federal government shutdown. A review by McClatchy finds that lawmakers, former intelligence officials and national security experts say they were shocked that the administration furloughed the bulk of federal workers at 16 intelligence agencies, many of them tasked with the most important job in the government: safeguarding lives. Some accuse Obama administration officials of deciding whom to send home based on politics, seeking to dramatize the impact of the shutdown as part of a plan to blame Republicans. But others say the process was surprisingly haphazard – a moving...

President Barack Obama has "full confidence" in Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius despite the troubled launch of the U.S. government website for signing up for his signature healthcare insurance program, the White House said on Tuesday. Americans trying to shop for health insurance at healthcare.gov under Obama's healthcare law have been frustrated by error messages, long waits and system failures, with many failing to make it through the system despite repeated tries.

The Obama administration has made headway against an online bottleneck that jammed enrollment for the president's healthcare reform, but new technical problems greeted users on Monday. Three weeks after the launch of new health insurance plans under Obamacare, users were able to create accounts for themselves and begin the process of enrolling. "Today was the first day that we got all the way to the last screen. But then an error screen popped up saying the site would be down for 72 hours," Zahran said.

The irony is rich. President Obama told Maryland college students just days before the launch of his healthcare "marketplace" that it would take just a few keystrokes to compare prices and policy details. "Don't take my word for it, go on the website," Obama told a crowd at Prince George's Community College in Largo, MD, five days before the launch. "See for yourself what the prices are. See for yourself what the choices are and then make up your own mind. That's all I'm asking." But the bureaucrats in his administration clearly weren't listening. They created a website that is...

Will the Floridians who have enrolled for Obamacare please stand up? Nearly two weeks after the federal government launched the online Health Insurance Marketplace at healthcare.gov, individuals who have successfully used the choked-up website to enroll for a subsidized health insurance plan have reached a status akin to urban legend: Everyone has heard of them, but very few people have actually met one. The Miami Herald searched high and low for individuals who completed enrollment for a subsidized health plan through the marketplace. As of Friday, however, only a smattering of success stories had emerged in news reports.

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. FULL TITLE: "146,000 Michiganders - at least - face loss of cheaper policies under new health care reform rules"

Many contractors for Healthcare.gov site seem to have been picked based on past government work rather than IT expertise. The biggest problem with Healthcare.gov seems simple enough: It was built by people who are apparently far more familiar with government cronyism than they are with IT. That's one of the insights that can be gleaned from the work done by the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on government transparency. In a report filed this past week, the group examined why the system broke as horribly as it did: The contracts awarded to those who built...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES.

The Spanish language website for the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, won't be available for online enrollment until the week of Oct. 21, officials said. Spanish speaking members of the community have been directed to the website Cuidadodesalud.gov as the Spanish language alternative to HealthCare.gov to enroll for insurance coverage. However, the website is not yet equipped with online enrollment tools, officials said. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials said the enrollment tools will launch when they celebrate a national Hispanic Week of Action during the week of Oct. 21 in order to ensure that Latinos in the...

Indian treatment methods could hold the key to the survival of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) that still offers mostly free medical care to all patients, irrespective of the income they earn. India’s use of production-line methods to conduct cataract operations has been cited as a way of saving massive UK surgery costs that will otherwise contribute to a looming cash crisis. British medical professionals say during cataract operations in India, simpler tasks are given to cheaper staff with qualified surgeons carrying out only the most complex part of the procedure. “This is not poor quality care, this is genuinely...

For most congressional Republicans, opposition to the Affordable Care Act is a simple matter of political math. Democrats represent most districts where the greatest numbers of uninsured residents reside. Republicans, in turn, need not rely on the votes of the people who lack health insurance and would gain most from Obamacare.

People whose 2014 income will be a little too high to get subsidized health insurance from Covered California next year should start thinking now about ways to lower it to increase their odds of getting the valuable tax subsidy. "If they can adjust (their income), they should," says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow with the Kaiser Family Foundation. "It's not cheating, it's allowed." For people in their early 60s, "it's a huge cliff," going from 401 to 400 percent of poverty, Pollitz says. That's because insurers can still charge older people more than younger ones. For younger people, moving below...

Recently I got a letter in the mail from the health insurer through which I have coverage as a small business owner. The letter began: "Starting Jan. 1, 2014, we will no longer offer or renew the individual health benefit plan you currently have. We're making this change because of requirements from the new health care reform law, called the Affordable Care Act." After spending a long time with the representative on the phone as he fumbled around trying to figure out how to price a replacement plan, I suggested he call me back when he had the information. He...

The dead-tree version of health insurance enrollment is turning out to be surprisingly popular. In the 36 states that make up the federal exchange, paper applications will be reviewed by Reston-based Serco, which received a $1.2 billion contract to hire 1,500 workers to do the work. Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who specializes in health policy, said filling out paper applications does give people the sense that the “process is underway,” he said. But, he added: “It will add to delay. It will add to errors.”

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them. Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized. “These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he...

In its first 11 days of operation, Oct. 1 through Friday, HealthSource RI fielded 62,000 unique website visits. Of these visitors, about 5,500 started accounts (created a username and password) and 1,698 completed their applications and selected a health insurance plan. These numbers were released Saturday by Christine C. Ferguson, director of the agency. HealthSource RI is not saying how many of the 1,698 who completed applications are small businesses (a key focus of the exchange) nor how many qualified for Medicaid.

In what may be California's last chance to build a "hydrogen highway," lined with thousands of high-tech vehicles emitting nothing but water vapor from their tailpipes, Gov. Jerry Brown has approved a plan to construct 100 hydrogen fueling stations across the state by 2024. Only a year ago, the California Air Resources Board required Big Oil to pay for the new stations. But after oil companies threatened to sue, Brown agreed to a compromise in which the costs of building hydrogen stations will be shifted to car owners through existing vehicle registration fees.

“The phones are ringing off the hook,” said Dizzy Warren, community outreach manager for Michigan Consumers Health Care. The health advocacy nonprofit received about $1.3 million in federal funding to do public outreach and enrollment for the Affordable Care Act statewide. But, Warren admits the system’s slow website has been a blockade for getting people enrolled. For some local navigators, there is a lack of demand. “It hasn’t been really demanding here at this point,” Jen Hansen, certified navigator based in Cadillac. “It think there is still a lot of confusion.”

Luisa Blue, head of the local Service Employees International Union in San Jose, has five more months to spend a million dollars. The union received a grant from Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace and is using some of the money to call people in their homes at night and on the weekend, as part of a massive education effort.

Some insurance experts warn that the federal Obamacare marketplace has a month or so to heal itself or risk harming enrollment. Others say it could be months, if not much longer, before the website is free of tech problems. "I think it could easily take up to two years before all these things are working smoothly," said Lisa Carroll, president of the Mosaic Insurance Exchange and the Small Businesses Service Bureau in Massachusetts. "This is just an ecommerce project of epic proportion," said Carroll. Carroll said the complicated task of getting all facets of the federal health insurance market to...

For starters, some insurance companies have received faulty enrollment data from the US-run insurance exchange, according to insurance industry consultants. Either the plans have been unable to open files forwarded to them from the exchange or have found that the information on the enrollees is incomplete. The IRS helps establish the eligibility of applicants for subsidies and will fine people who don't obtain health insurance. But the federal exchange cannot yet communicate online with Medicaid agencies in the 36 states where it is operating. Federal officials said that connectivity will not be in place before November 1, due to technical...

The insurance exchange — a key component of President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul — hasn’t been able to sell any insurance in Hawaii because of problems with the software at the heart of the marketplace. Consumers can’t see plans, even though a variety of options from two insurers have been approved to be sold by the state’s insurance division. Hawaii’s health insurance marketplace is hoping to turn around a stalled start by providing plans and pricing to consumers by Oct. 15 — but there are no guarantees, its executive director said Wednesday. Coral Andrews, executive director of Hawaii...

Since October 1st, when Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges were launched, they have been plagued by glitches. Obamacare’s main goal is to expand access to cheap insurance. It offers subsidies to those who cannot afford it and bars insurers from charging people more because they are sick. The sick who lack insurance will probably keep trying to enroll. The young and healthy may give up more quickly, if it is too difficult. And if they do, the insurance firms that offer policies via the exchanges will find that their pool of customers is disproportionately sick and costly to cover. This may spur...

Jeff Jones started shopping for health insurance as soon as the Obamacare insurance marketplaces opened on October 1. The Kentucky resident is like a lot LGBT citizens who have not had access to affordable health insurance in the past. If Jones, 47, had been able to legally marry, he would have immediately been eligible for coverage under his partner, Nathan Walker’s, policy. Walker has domestic partnership benefits at work, but the couple haven’t lived together long enough to qualify for them. “I’m a diabetic, so I do want to make sure I’m covered,” Jones said. As a whole the LGBT...

When it comes to Obamacare, the big date we’ve heard for a long time is Jan. 1, 2014. That’s the day the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, requiring most Americans to be covered, or pay a fine. We’ve also heard that there’s a grace period — that in this first year, people have until March 31 get covered before the fine will kick in. But, whoops! It turns out that Mar. 31 date is wrong, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday. In order to have coverage by March 31, you need to enroll by Feb....

There are radio and television commercials galore, along with Twitter and Facebook posts and scores of highway billboards. There are armies of outreach workers who speak Spanish, Tagalog, Cambodian, Mandarin and Cantonese, all flocking to county fairs, farmers markets, street festivals and back-to-school nights across the state. There are even dinner parties in Latino neighborhoods designed to reach one family at a time. With enthusiastic backing from state officials and an estimated seven million uninsured, California is a crucial testing ground for the success of President Obama’s health care law.

For 18 months, Joe Titus constantly worried about getting seriously ill after he lost his medical coverage after he was laid off from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor. Titus was able to sign up for a Premera Blue Cross plan. The plan’s monthly premium is $349.13. However, because Titus has no income he qualified for tax credits to cover his premium and co-pays for his diabetes and asthma medication and doctor visits, reducing his co-pay and premium to zero. Vancouver resident Guy Kirchgatter also said he had a good experience with in-person navigators, getting help at the...

Obamacare's main signup engine attracted just 6,200 new customers on its launch day and 51,000 after the first week At the same rate, the 6-month open enrollment period would sign up just 2 million Americans, including 14 states and D.C., which have their own insurance exchanges The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financially Numerous Obama administration officials have denied seeing any enrollment figures at all MailOnline's sources are two Health and Human Services workers who have access to the data as it's crunched Texas congressman says anemic national enrollment numbers are...

The fate of the Affordable Care Act, notwithstanding obstructionism by the Republicans and the nine House Democrats, depends strongly on the success of efforts to get uninsured people to enroll for health insurance. First and foremost in making this happen are the navigators. There’s no reason to let the Obama administration off the hook for its own responsibility in making the work of the navigators tough, what with navigator grants that were announced only in August with training materials issued in September for the October 1st start-up of the exchanges, not to mention embarrassing computer glitches. Since the nonprofit sector...

Navigators who were hired to help people enroll in the new online health insurance marketplaces say they are hopeful the website will be running more smoothly in the next few days. Cathy Harding, executive director of the Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved, said that the website should have glitches worked out in the next several days. Harding’s group, which oversees about 80 of the state’s certified navigators through a federal grant, hasn’t heard of a single person who has been able to enroll using the online system. “Clearly everybody is a little frustrated,” Harding said. “People spent significant amounts...

<p>Until glitches plaguing the online rollout in Pennsylvania of the Affordable Care Act are corrected, the uninsured should enroll by phone or mail, a high-ranking federal health official said here.</p> <p>"You can actually go through the whole application process over the phone," said Joanne Corte Grossi, a regional director for the Department of Health and Human Services. "I really encourage that."</p>

More than a week after the launch of the new federally run health-insurance marketplaces, Mary Webster joked yesterday that her enrollment headaches seem to be turning into a “chronic condition." Health insurers in Ohio told The Dispatch they have had Ohioans successfully enroll in their marketplace plans. CareSource said it has had enrollees from six regions in Ohio, with “double-digit” enrollment to date. “Enrollment appears to be slow,” said Ed Byers, a spokesman for Medical Mutual of Ohio.

House Republicans are asking the federal government exactly how many people have been able to enroll in the new health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. It's a question the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been asked by reporters for more than a week but the administration has so far refused to answer.

As of noon Tuesday, Arise Health Plan had sold nine health plans on the new marketplace in Wisconsin set up under the Affordable Care Act. The Health Department — which has trained 13 people to help people sign up for coverage — has not been able to enroll anyone in the first week. And the marketplace still was having problems as of Tuesday. This was a full week after the launch of the marketplace — and the problems that have rendered the marketplaces in Wisconsin and other states largely inoperable in their first week still have not been fully worked...