Health insurance exchanges

The New Year marks a start for ACA compliance, and while many employers struggle to comply with the specifics, it’s a good reminder to focus on where you are now and how you plan to move forward.

Although consumer support tools were better during open enrollment year two as compared with the first go on Healthcare.gov and the state-based marketplaces, there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. is poised for HIX-related growth in 2015 on the heels of solid third-quarter revenue.

Oregon officials are pledging to avoid 2014’s enrollment nightmare, which prevented the state-run HIX from fully launching online and led to the departure of six top officials connected to the exchange.

The HIX market has undergone a facelift over the past year in some states where hopes are running high that a 2.0 reboot will be just what the doctor ordered.

Early next year, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that labor law and health care benefit advisers say could affect the Affordable Care Act’s strict employer mandate penalties.

Early next year, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that labor law and health care benefit advisers say could affect the Affordable Care Act’s strict employer mandate penalties.

Noting how insurers have few incentives to invest in wellness and disease management programs that could take up to three years to pay off, two researchers have suggested multi-year HIX options to promote healthier living and a more efficient health care system in the face of “unintended consequences” from the Affordable Care Act.

The Obama administration says it will investigate benefit plan designs for discrimination and suspect practices that discourage people with costly medical conditions from enrolling in a plan.

Most folks would agree that if something isn’t broken, then there’s no need to fix it, but few believe that argument applies to the Affordable Care Act. A flurry of recent research suggests that Americans think the polarizing law deserves public patience, while other findings note that it’s still unpopular.

The private and public exchanges offer employers an opportunity to help manage costs and provide personalized benefits, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution, industry experts say.

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 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 decision by CMS leaves just eight days for insurers to send bills to those signing up on the last day of the enrollment period.

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.

Helen Darling, NBGH president and CEO, says about a third (32%) of employees surveyed also believe that the overall quality of their health care benefits will drop as the ACA begins to roll out.

Cigna has instructed brokers to halt selling insurance to individuals who are subsidy-eligible through its federal health care exchange broker portals.

The calculator that determines subsidies for the 36 states relying on the federal government for exchanges come Oct. 1 isn’t working in tests, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Officials from the 17 exchanges, including D.C., that will run separate from the federal government share how they are training brokers to be involved.

Federal officials now will allow some insurers to wait until 2015 to comply with the consumer protection.