Medicare Part B Premiums Won't Go Up in 2014
October 29th 2013The premiums for Medicare Part B will remain flat in 2014 and seniors have saved $8.3 billion on Part D prescriptions since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday.
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Medicaid Enrollment Spike a Threat to Obamacare Structure?
October 28th 2013The disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov may have another serious problem: A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance.
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Experts Consider Value of ICD-10
October 28th 2013Implementation of ICD-10, or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision, is on the horizon. This significant, next-generation change in the health information technology field will be used for everything from billing and measuring quality to managing population health.
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Docs Protest as Insurers Trim Advantage Networks in Reaction to Rate Reductions
October 28th 2013Many physicians around the country are getting notices from Advantage plans that they are being cut from private insurers' networks. In addition, some insurers have announced they are reducing their Advantage plan offerings in some states, trimming extra benefits and increasing patient cost sharing.
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Individual Insurance Exchange Enrollment Penalty Delayed
October 25th 2013Amid the havoc of a healthcare insurance exchange website overwhelmed with problems, many aired concerns as to whether the individual mandate penalty would be delayed.In addition to President Obama calling in reinforcements to address exchange technology problems, the administration announced Wednesday that it would extend the consumer enrollment deadline until March 31, 2014.
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5.2 Million Adults Will Fall Into ACA Coverage Gap Next Year
October 25th 2013About 5.2 million poor, uninsured adults will fall into the coverage gap, created by 26 states choosing not to expand Medicaid under the federal health law next year, according to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Obama Administration Plans To Delay Penalties For Consumers
October 24th 2013The Obama administration said Wednesday that it would delay imposing penalties for six weeks on some consumers who might have been caught in a sticky timing problem for enrolling in coverage through the health law's new insurance marketplaces.
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Insurers Offering 78,437 Policy Variations Over HealthCare.gov Site
October 24th 2013Data now obtainable from HealthCare.gov show there are 78,437 variations of health plans throughout the 36 states covered under the federal government's troubled web site, ranging from a bare-bones policy going for $81.34 a month in Kansas for a 27-year-old, up to a so-called gold family plan with an HMO in Virginia costing $6,494.54 a month.
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EHR Makers Surprised by Stage 2 Complexity
October 23rd 2013As the end of 2013 closes in, most federal certification bodies are noticing an uptick in the number of vendors who are applying to become certified under the 2014 criteria - the same criteria that will be required for the EHR products providers must use to attest to meaningful use Stage 2.
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Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes
October 21st 2013Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.
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Will U.S. Healthcare Premium Guessing Game Continue in 2014?
October 18th 2013Benefits consultant Aon Hewitt predicted that healthcare premium costs for large U.S. employers would rise about 6 percent in 2013, but when it tallied up its numbers for the year, the increase was only about 3.3 percent.
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Health Information Exchange Saved $2K per ED Patient, Study Finds
October 17th 2013Physicians' access to a health information exchange saved more than $1 million in emergency care costs over a one-year period, according to a study released Monday by the American College of Emergency Physicians,
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Texas Prepares to Shutter High-Risk Insurance Pool
October 17th 2013At year's end, Texas will shut down its high-risk insurance pool for some of the state's sickest residents, pushing participants to find private coverage in the federal health insurance marketplace created under the federal Affordable Care Act.
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