Topic:

Health Insurance Exchanges

Latest Headlines

Latest Headlines

Kevin Counihan, Andy Slavitt try to ease insurers' ACA worries

Though major U.S. health insurers have increasingly raised concerns about the sustainability of the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, Healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan says there are reasons to be optimistic that the market is stabilizing.

Experts say Donald Trump's health plan lacks substance

Left- and right-leaning healthcare policy experts are speaking out against leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's recently released healthcare plan that that they say is full of contradictions and unrealistic policy changes.  

CMS changes will cut Medicare Advantage payments, report says

Recently proposed changes to Medicare Advantage payment rules will result in an estimated 0.5 to 3.9 percent cut on average to MA payments in 2017, according to a new report.  

CMS plans network-breadth rating system for Healthcare.gov plans

Though the federal government has stepped back from its proposal to implement additional network adequacy regulations for Affordable Care Act plans, it will move forward with its initiative to provide Healthcare.gov shoppers with information about health plans' network breadth.  

N.J. acting attorney general says Horizon's Omnia plans not illegal

New Jersey's acting attorney general said Friday that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield's Omnia tiered-network plans do not break any state laws, according to  NJ.com.

Industry leaders weigh in on the state of the ACA

Some of the top healthcare policy experts in the country tackled the current state of the industry and the impact of the Affordable Care Act--both positive and negative--in a series of viewpoints published by the  Journal of the American Medical Association.

Employer-based health insurance: Should it stay or should it go?

I did a double-take when I read a line in a new book by Rita Numerof, Ph.D., in which she writes that "employers would love to get out of the insurance business." The reason, she argues, is that employers increasingly have to pass rising premium costs onto employees and focus on price rather than value, making for an annual headache when negotiating rates with insurers. But if the system is so broken, why haven't employers yet gotten out of managing health benefits? One simple answer, Numerof told me in an exclusive interview, is that change does not come easily.  

HHS touts 'historic' gain of 20M covered through Affordable Care Act

Affordable Care Act provisions including marketplace coverage and Medicaid expansion have led 20 million U.S. adults to gain health insurance from 2010 to early 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services announced.  

Oscar loses millions on Affordable Care Act plans

Not unlike the large U.S. health insurers with which it is competing, startup Oscar Insurance Corp. is facing financial losses tied to operating on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.  

AHA makes another push to thwart Anthem-Cigna merger

The American Hospital Association reinforced its objections to the Anthem-Cigna merger this week, honing in on concerns that the partnership would give Blue Cross Blue Shield plans an even larger share of the health insurance market, raising costs for consumers, and in some cases, pushing competitors out of certain markets altogether, according to a letter sent to the Department of Justice.