News
The Department of Health and Human Services is promising consumers a simple enrollment process, but the federal marketplace website, along with a number of state exchanges, were glitchy or non-functioning during the morning of Oct. 1, as software kinks were exposed and servers were strained.
The federal government has shut down, but the health insurance exchanges opened for business as planned Tuesday, although with traffic tie-ups, despite Republican lawmakers' efforts to block a major component of the health reform law from taking effect.
Many of the 50 individuals who showed up for a community forum to find out about the Maryland Health Connection on a September evening in suburban Washington appeared to share a need for what the health insurance exchange could offer them.
As Congress has failed to pass legislation to continue funding the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services has furloughed more than half of its employees. Medicare and Medicaid funding will survive, at least in the short term.
Much public discussion about the Affordable Care Act has focused on the health insurance exchanges. But a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to support the exchanges, including the creation of thousands of new jobs.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is getting ready for the first year of its multi-state health plans, offering consumers another, perhaps little-known option in state and federal exchanges.
Patient advocacy groups have made available a cancer insurance checklist tool to help cancer patients decide which is the most appropriate health plan for them when shopping for coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.
Medicare officials will delay until 2014 enforcement of controversial new rules that define when hospital patients should receive observation care, rather than being admitted, a distinction that makes beneficiaries ineligible for follow-up nursing home coverage.
The opening of the health insurance exchanges may be anticlimactic after all the waiting and noise from supporters and critics of the Affordable Care Act. Health insurers and exchanges are expected to be ready, at least with minimal processes, to be able to enroll customers Oct. 1.
Most hospitals do a solid job of managing patient receivables and associated bad debt expense, but even well performing organizations are quick to say there is always room for improvement.