Bruce Shutan

As Towers Watson & Co. and Willis Group Holdings Plc head to the altar for an all-stock merger valued at $18 billion, their respective private exchanges could command the roles of best man and bridesmaid.

It turns out that two of the most common consumer complaints about HIX plans mirror longstanding gripes about traditional health insurance, but there’s a movement afoot to ensure provider network directories are accurate and help patients better calculate and budget for out-of-pocket costs in the nascent online marketplace.

Most of the 13 state-run public health insurance have collectively spent $4.8 billion in federal funding during their first 17 months of operations and face serious cash-flow problems.

A legislation proposal by 32 Republicans that would temporarily preserve federal premium subsidies for Healthcare.gov enrollees through August 2017 if the Supreme Court rules them unconstitutional in King v. Burwell would simply bandage a festering wound. That’s the conclusion of a recent American Academy of Actuaries analysis.

The clock is ticking for various state legislatures that are pondering a change in the way their residents enroll in public health insurance exchanges ahead of the widely anticipated June ruling in King v. Burwell on whether federal subsidies will be scrapped in 34 states that rely on Healthcare.gov for signups.

Low-cost lending and credit-establishment services emerge as a new benefit to help employees make better financial decisions.

Nearly half of the 17 state-run public health insurance exchanges are suffering financial difficulties with the chief culprits being high expenses and tepid enrollment, which rose just 12% compared with compared to a 61% increase for Healthcare.gov.

After two years of health plan enrollments in the emerging online marketplace, it’s possible that public and private exchanges are finally converging.

Health care consumers in some parts of the U.S. may face higher premiums next year if some insurers struggle to cover their costs and Congress continues to require that the risk-corridors program established under the ACA be self-sustaining.

Covered California’s Small Employer Health Options Program (SHOP) is growing, but a private-sector competitor to the state-run HIX is growing even faster.

What happens if the U.S. Supreme Court decides next month to eliminate federal subsidies for as many as 10 million consumers in 37 states and carriers are unable to cover claims based on rates they've already submitted to Healthcare.gov?

Highlights of the expected legislation include limiting tax exclusions on employer-provided health insurance to $12,000 for individual coverage and $30,000 for family coverage and dismantling Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act in favor of state grants.

A new $250,000 national advertising campaign running on several popular political TV programs casts the Affordable Care Act as a positive force that is saving lives. It also seeks to counteract continued threats of repeal or scaling back the landmark legislation.

About 25% of health plans in two state-run public exchanges were found to violate the federal mental health parity law, according to research by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that was published in the journal Psychiatric Services.

Best-performing state exchanges have thrived on strong, coordinated and targeted outreach, as well as enrollment-assistance programs that are embedded in the community.

Remote access to care is expected to soar as telehealth offerings prove to be major time and money saver for employers.

Some New Yorkers can choose from more than a hundred health insurance products offered by more than a dozen insurers participating in the state-run health insurance exchange, depending on where they live, but they’re hard-pressed to find anything other than the HMO-style plans that dominate the landscape.

In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, concern has been mounting that Minnesota’s state-run HIX is slowly sinking into insolvency exacerbated by downward revisions in projected enrollment and speculation that it could be supplanted by Healthcare.gov at some point.

More than 1 million Americans enrolled in consumer operated and oriented plans known as CO-OPs over the past 18 months during which average premium rates in states with these nonprofit alternatives to commercial carrier options were found to be lower than those without such plans.

There may be a convergence of public and private exchanges and if that happens carriers need to adopt a more holistic approach and consider multiple retail channels to distribute their products as part of a multi-carrier approach or alliances such as those seen within the CO-OP market.