Healthcare reform

Aetna and other insurers that initially fought President Obama’s health care overhaul are reversing course and supporting the effort by funding a group planning to spend $100 million to help the uninsured get coverage.

As PPACA is implemented, the number of IT, software and service jobs created could easily boom into the hundreds of thousands.

The Supreme Court gave a university founded by Jerry Falwell a new chance to argue in a lower court that President Obama’s health care law doesn’t give religious objectors a broad enough exemption.

Provisions associated with PPACA increase the amount an employer can offer for tobacco cessation from 20% of the total cost of health coverage to 50%.

HHS outlines various conditions and services insurers must cover, and rules to let companies expand employee wellness programs in new proposed regulations of the ACA posted Tuesday.

The health care reform law imposes billions of taxes and fees on insurers and companies that provide the highest level of overage, and Stop the HIT, a new coalition of trade groups, will be petitioning to lessen the levy.

Equity Healthcare CEO Robert Galvin last week told the National Business Coalition on Health that Congress, even PPACA supporters, want employer-sponsored insurance in the game for the long haul.

States received an extra month from the Obama administration to decide whether to build online marketplaces for medical insurance after Republican governors pressed their resistant to the president’s health care law.

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.

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 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.

Health insurance company stocks fall Wednesday after Obama’s re-election affirms PPACA will move forward. Health reform’s product standardization and transparency will “pressure margins,” insurers say, offsetting any potential for increased profits from a larger client base.

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.

Repealing health care reform would be no easy task for a President-elect Romney, says employee benefits attorney Frank Palmieri, adding that if Obama is re-elected, he has lots of work to do to keep implementation going smoothly.

A recent survey shows a lack of planning around health care reform on the part of many small businesses, and even confusion over the obligation to provide coverage.

A survey by online health benefits seller eHealthInsurance finds that more than three-quarters of small business clients are not doing long-term planning on how health reform, including insurance exchanges, may affect their business.

Nancy Bolton maintains employers need to plan and implement health care reform provisions no matter who wins the presidential election