Benefit plan design

Enrollment in Obamacare health plans for small businesses is off to a slow start, leaving in doubt whether the U.S. program can attract enough customers to satisfy insurers.

Despite assurances from the Department of Health and Human Services that Healthcare.gov is secure, Committee on Oversight & Government Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calf.) said Thursday that we “must assume that website is still vulnerable and Americans may have [personally identifiable information] hacked and taken.”

The back-end payment system of Healthcare.gov is still being built, a senior Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official said Thursday in testimony on Capitol Hill.

The U.S. government has awarded Accenture’s Federal Services unit a one-year contract, with an initial payment of $45 million, the Dublin-based company said in a statement Accenture will succeed Montreal-based CGI Group, which drew criticism for the website’s early stumbles.

CGI Group, the company that built the main Obamacare website, will be replaced next month when its contract with the U.S. federal government expires, a person familiar with the decision said.

Humana said it expects new Obamacare customers to be sicker and costlier than anticipated, after the U.S. government’s decision to let healthier people keep their existing plans.

Most uninsured people in the U.S. have yet to try to sign up for health coverage under Obamacare, and a key advocacy group said it will hire more workers to reach those unfamiliar with the law.

The committee released its findings ahead of a Friday House vote on Republican-sponsored H.R. 3811, the Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act, which would require that the Department of Health and Human Services notify individuals within two days of a known security breach of the Healthcare.gov website.

Two of the largest U.S. health insurers are giving Obamacare customers more time to pay their initial premiums as the industry tries to coax millions of people to take the final step in cementing coverage for 2014.

The U.S. recession remained a drag on health care spending three years after it ended as a net of 9.4 million people lost private insurance coverage before key provisions of Obamacare had begun, a government report showed.

About 2.1 million people have medical coverage as of yesterday through Obamacare after a late surge in enrollment helped regain ground lost to the botched debut of insurance exchanges created by the U.S. health-care overhaul.

From emergency rooms to pharmacies to company human-resources departments, changes will unfold within the U.S. health-care system on Jan. 1 as the nation guarantees insurance coverage to all Americans for the first time, a goal that has eluded presidents and lawmakers since the end of World War Two.

The deadline to enroll in health plans that begin Jan. 1 was extended to midnight today from yesterday for most of the U.S., the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said. The extension was announced as healthcare.gov yesterday experienced a single-day record number of visits and consumers were moved into a queuing system deployed when the website approaches 50,000 simultaneous users.

The success of the health care overhaul relies on a diverse pool of customers where younger, healthier participants balance the costs of covering older, sicker people. Insurers say they can’t make more concessions without putting themselves at risk that patients will wait and sign up only when they need care.

President Barack Obama said the thousands of people now signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act overshadow the hit he’s been taking in the polls for the defect-riddled roll-out of the Affordable Care Act.

The most recent LIMRA survey reveals that approximately 60% of Americans who have used health exchanges so far to try to shop for health coverage say they sought out assistance when actually buying their health insurance plan.

Much concern had been voiced about the ability for consumers and insurers alike to execute billing and payment between Dec. 23 and Dec. 31 for coverage effective Jan. 1. AHIP offered to extend that deadline to Jan. 10 on Wednesday.

Why small employers haven’t bought into private exchanges — yet

It’s no surprise that the year ahead is going to mean skyrocketing voluntary sales. But experts say it’s no easy feat for health brokers trying to break into the business.

The government failed to send data to health insurers for about 15,000 people who enrolled in Obamacare through early December, an error corrected last week before it could jeopardize their coverage, the U.S. said.