Healthcare

Several Republican leaders have either confirmed that they’ll be letting the federal government handle their states’ health care exchanges, or have yet to say, and the deadline is Friday.

Access to quality life insurance for middle and lower income families has disappeared over the past 10 to 20 years. A life insurance agent simply cannot make lower income American’s a primary market and be financially successful, says blogger Tinker Kelly. But how can you overcome that?

Expansion of consumer-directed health plans and investment in health management programs produced the lowest average annual employer cost increase since 1997, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, conducted annually by Mercer.

Rumor has it that the Department of Labor recently hired a lot of new field auditors, which could only mean one thing — more audits. Which Principal Financial's Aaron Friedman says means it is safe to say that more 403(b) plans will be put on the firing line as well. Just what we need, right? Well, a little work now and some knowledge may help, so keep reading.

In a letter to the nation’s governors, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius eased a tight deadline for the states to declare whether and how they will build health insurance exchanges mandated and funded under the Affordable Care Act.

Starting next year, PPACA will lead to a 3.8% surtax on many people’s investment income, but there are ways around it.

President Obama’s re-election rallied shares for hospitals last week as the number of insured Americans is set to rise. Health insurance companies, however, face profit limits and new taxes.

The health care industry will change its focus from expanding the insurance market to reining in medical costs now that the presidential election has been decided, says the CEO of the main lobbying group for health insurers.

The Congressional Budget Office said in a report that a Congressional fix to exclude broker commissions from medical loss ratio calculations will increase deficits by $531 million over the 2013-2017 period.

The president’s re-election probably spells doom for any short-term efforts to overturn PPACA, and industry professionals who waited to implement health care reform changes can wait no longer.