Benefit plan design

Employers and HR professionals will have to come to terms with the most common (but hopefully not absolutely systemic) reality for employees: rates will, in some cases, go up. That’s a simple fact of life, and you can blame the ACA all you want, but the truth is that health care rates were likely to inch marginally anyhow.

While the top exchange leader confirmed Tuesday that 70,000 agents have completed federal training, documents obtained by Republicans suggest CMS might begin outreach to get more professionals involved.

The race to construct an online insurance exchange by Oct. 1 spurred the Obama administration to use an expedited bidding system that limited its choice of a builder to just four companies, including CGI Group.

President Obama touted this state as exemplary Wednesday in his health care speech, but one broker says there was a loophole for those who were able to enroll.

Seventy percent of midsized businesses – those with between 50 and 999 employees – surveyed said their biggest challenge in 2013 is the cost of health coverage and benefits. ACA legislation came in as the No. 2 concern.

Two days after the troubled online U.S. health exchange went live, just 248 people nationwide had successfully enrolled in insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, documents show.

A debrief on the types of changes that trigger the loss of grandfathered status, the concept at the center of the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” issue.

Most health plan cancellation notices are being delivered to individuals who had coverage that is now out of line with the Affordable Care Act. But some the changes are also affecting small employers who must decide whether to pay the higher costs for new coverage, or send workers to purchasing exchanges.

The White House calls the nationwide uptick in health plan cancellations a result of “substandard policies” being eliminated, but advisers express concern over resulting rate hikes.

A day after her deputy apologized for the failures with the Affordable Care Act insurance exchange, U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius followed suit and told Congress that she shoulders the blame for the botched rollout.

CMS is communicating minimally with the thousands of insurance brokers who went through training for the 36 federally-run exchanges, while prominent ACA spokespeople — including the president — repeatedly fail to mention brokers as a viable exchange information source.

With the online site expected to face difficulties through November, Americans may have only weeks to find replacement coverage, and many may end up paying higher premiums.

With the online site expected to face difficulties through November, Americans may have only weeks to find replacement coverage, and many may end up paying higher premiums.

While the rest of the country was trying to access exchange websites on Oct. 1 and having no luck, something remarkable happened in Connecticut.

Eager to meet client needs - and keep their business - brokers hunt for info on exchanges.

A 40% excise tax on co-called Cadillac coverage under the Affordable Care Act will not be assessed until 2018, which gives employers time to tweak their plan design, but now there’s concern that platinum-level health insurance might disappear from public exchanges.

More than 300,000 people have visited Kentucky’s health-care exchange website, and more than 26,000 people have signed up for plans, with 10,000 more “in the process of choosing,” Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said.

Despite a CMS report Friday that nearly half of all applications completed so far are from the federally-run state exchanges, brokers on the front lines have a different perspective.

Daily unique visitors to Healthcare.gov have steadily and dramatically declined since the site’s launch, according to data from Internet analytics company comScore.

Just how will the fight in Congress over health exchange website glitches pan out? EBA spoke with former Capitol Hill staffer Drew Crouch, now director of government relations at Buck Consultants, about potential Republican strategies — and if tax reform that would impact employee benefits might still be on the table for this year.