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Citing higher-than-expected costs, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico wants to raise premiums by an average of 51.6 percent on individual Affordable Care Act plans in 2016. The company made the request in a preliminary rate proposal filed with New Mexico Insurance Superintendent John Franchini. Blue Cross and Blue Shield – which insures an estimated 600,000 people statewide – said the proposal affects an estimated 35,000 customers who signed up for qualified individual health plans through the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, but also those who bought the same plans off the exchange. Franchini has the final authority...

Obamacare, now 5 years old, working mostly as designed: Bloomberg opinion By Jonathan Bernstein Obamacare turns five years old Monday. Let's go straight to what you need to know. -- The law is working more or less as it was supposed to. The two goals of the Affordable Care Act were to expand coverage and to cut costs. The first part has worked as the drafters expected. Even though the effort has fallen short in states that have refused Medicaid expansion (which U.S. Supreme Court allowed them to do), the law has sharply increased the number of Americans with health...

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — The new director of Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is making a case for keeping the state-run marketplace, as some lawmakers are calling for its demise. HealthSource RI has served as a model among the state-run marketplaces. Most other states use the federal exchange. Director Anya Rader Wallack says Rhode Island can use the state exchange as a tool to innovate and control health care costs in ways it couldn't if it switched. Gov. Gina Raimondo supports keeping the program in Rhode Island. But some say it isn't worth it. A group of lawmakers, led by...

On March 4 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear King v. Burwell, the case challenging health insurance-premium subsidies for those who buy their insurance on the 37 federal exchanges. (...) First, Congress could extend the subsidies until the end of 2015, and allow people to keep those subsidies that they have already received. This would avoid disruption in health care and in insurance markets, whose terms are set months ahead. Second, Congress could create a new temporary state-based option for continued health insurance coverage beginning in 2016 until it could craft a long-term solution. (...)

I did my Income Taxes online last night. I got a surprise near the end. The tax program, I've used for years would not let me complete the process until I answered "Government Required" questions re: my family's health care. It began with: "Due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act......" It seemed to indicate that if one does not have Health Coverage, it could hold up your Tax Return. That's your Government at work "for you"!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only do more Americans have health insurance, but the number struggling with medical costs has dropped since President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded coverage, according to a study released Thursday. The Commonwealth Fund’s biennial health insurance survey found that the share of U.S. adults who did not get needed care because of cost dropped from 43 percent in 2012 to 36 percent last year, as the health care law’s main coverage expansion went into full swing. The proportion of people who got treatment but had problems paying their bills also dropped, from 41 percent in...

"Voters are stupid" economist Jonathan Gruber and Marilyn Tavenner face Issa and the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee today on C-SPAN 3. FOX News reports that Tavenner has asked that she be seated anywhere but next to Gruber. Apparently, Gruber is radioactive. Time will tell whether this affliction is covered under Obamacare.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, says he has every intention of voting to repeal Obamacare with a new GOP majority in January, but also said people should be realistic about what to expect in the way of repeal with President Obama still in the White House. “We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare. … It was a very large issue in the campaign,” Mr. McConnell told Roll Call. “We’re certainly gonna keep our commitment to the American people to make every effort we can to repeal it. “It is a...

I grew up in a Democratic family. I have been a registered Democrat since age 18, a Democratic candidate for statewide office in Colorado and a party precinct captain in that caucus state. I’ve volunteered for numerous Democratic candidates and contributed to party causes and campaigns. The 2014 election results were extremely disappointing for me, but hardly a surprise. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, then lost my job in the Great Recession. I was lucky; my brother lost his job and his house. I survived on part-time jobs while paying out-of-pocket for my health insurance. I voted for...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act in one fell swoop by starving it of funding, but many of his Republican colleagues, while saying they agree with his goal, prefer a less radical approach, Politico reported. The lawmakers would vote instead against individual planks of the president's signature healthcare program, such as the tax on medical devices and the redefinition of full-time work as 30-hours a week,  Politico said. It would take a simple 51-vote majority to take down Obamacare outright using a budget reconciliation measure. Each one of the new GOP senators campaigned on...

In a sense, Jonathan Gruber’s response today to the emergence of his 2012 explanation for the language in ObamaCare mirrors the attempt to get courts to ignore the plain text of the statute and instead rule based on the most current interpretation. The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn reached out to Gruber to get his reaction to the emergence of the Nobilis video in which the architect of ObamaCare explains that the restriction of subsidies to states with their own exchanges was a rational attempt to coerce states into creating those exchanges, rather than shifting the burden back to the federal...

An increasing burden of paperwork, tied in part to healthcare reforms driven by Obamacare, now consumes about one-sixth of a typical America physician’s day — impinging on the time doctors can spend caring for patients. That’s the upshot of a new study led by Harvard Medical School researchers who found the average doctor spends 16.6 percent of his or her working hours on non-patient-related paperwork. The findings, which are based on a nationally representative survey of physicians, tied the trend to changes in U.S. health policy — including a shift to employment in large practices, the implementation of electronic medical...

Get ready to whip out your credit card before you are wheeled into the operating room or undergo an MRI. Hospitals are increasingly asking patients to pay for procedures either upfront or before they are discharged. That's because Americans are shouldering a greater portion of their health care bills, and medical centers don't want to get stuck with patients that can't pay. (snip) The policies available on the Affordable Care Act exchanges are hastening this trend. Many enrollees are opting for the bronze and silver plans, which often carry deductibles upwards of $5,000 and $2,000, respectively. "The bronze plans are...

The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, authorized the Department of Health and Human Services to cut or increase categories of Medicare spending. Last year, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced home health care funding would be slashed by 3.5 percent annually until 2017. According to industry analysts, these cuts disproportionately affect women—the majority of whom serve as home health care beneficiaries, caregivers and professionals in the home health care sector. See linked report: http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/16/this-bill-would-undo-medicare-home-health-cuts-under-obamacare/

Nearly twice as many people are expected to drop out of Colorado’s state-run health care exchange in the coming years than originally projected, leading to nearly $2 million lost in associated fees for the financially embattled program over the next two years. Connect for Health Colorado originally projected that 13 percent of enrollees will either leave the exchange in fiscal 2015 or fail to pay their bills, but now they project the figure to be as high as 24 percent, according to the Denver Post. If that’s the case, the exchange will lose out on about $1 million in fees...

More than one-fifth of the popu-lation of the United States was receiving Medicaid benefits before the passage of The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA expanded eligibility to adults under the age of 65 who have income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. As originally written, the ACA relied on two provisions intended to entice and prod states to expand their Medicaid programs. So far, about half of the states have expanded their programs. The carrot enticing states to expand their programs is the generous federal participation. This year, the federal government will cover 100% of the...

WASHINGTON — Surgery patients covered by Medicaid arrive at the hospital in worse health, experience more complications, stay longer and cost more than patients with private insurance, a new study has found. The study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, may offer a preview of what to expect as millions of uninsured people qualify for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

President Obama on Friday appointed longtime White House aide Kristie Canegallo as deputy chief of staff for policy implementation, to oversee issues that include the continuing rollout of the Affordable Care Act and better integration of technology in classrooms. The move, which comes three days before senior White House health-care adviser Phil Schiliro will step down, aims to institutionalize some of the changes chief of staff Denis McDonough made in the wake of the health-care law’s botched debut last fall. [....] Unlike many of Obama’s top advisers, who came to their jobs through politics, Canegallo started as a civilian Pentagon...

Health and Human service released a seven page bulletin Wednesday announcing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service's decision to extend the transitional policy of the Affordable Care Act by two years, to Oct. 1, 2016. Effectively, this makes the individual mandate -- the requirement that all individuals purchase insurance by the end of March or face a tax penalty -- considered by many to be the backbone of the Affordable Care Act, an option one can opt out of rather than a requirement. The transitional policy allows for hardship exemption from the tax penalty if an individual can’t afford...

Here's Proof: the Obama Administration Doesn't Care Whether You Work Or Not It was mildly surprising when the Congressional Budget Office announced this week that the Affordable Care Act will result in some 2.5 million fewer Americans working than otherwise. What was shocking was that the Obama administration response revealed that the president is simply indifferent to whether you have a job or not. In the new Newspeak, a job equals confinement and unemployment is liberation. If, as a senior White House official said, the news “reflects the fact that workers have a new set of options and are making...