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Insurers on the New York health exchange are requesting rate hikes averaging in excess of 17%, with UnitedHealthcare going as high as a whopping 45.6%. UnitedHealthcare has already announced that they would exit most of the Affordable Care Act state exchanges in which they operate in 2017, New York being one of the few exceptions. The biggest health insurer in the country announced that it lost $475 million on the ACA exchanges last year and could lose another $500 million this year. They explained that states in which they would continue to serve – like New York – would be...

TRICARE should admit wrongdoing and pay past due amounts to the UVP states It is no secret that America’s veterans are getting the shaft. We have seen these troubling headlines: A fatal wait: Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital’s secret list Veteran dies after setting himself on fire outside New Jersey VA clinic The stories behind these and similar headlines reveal that America has not lived up to its promise to “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan.” In fact, military families, specifically the children of military families, face similar...

Marilyn Tavenner's crystal ball didn't foresee the initial epic flop of HealthCare.gov when she actually ran the agency in charge of the website. Now, as an insurance lobbyist, she sees big jumps in Obamacare insurance premiums next year. ... HealthCare.gov was a disaster when it launched in the fall of 2013, and was essentially unable to sign up meaningful numbers of customers ... customers, and new ones, could be hit with sticker shock when it comes to enrolling in 2017 plans, which go on sale next fall. ... Tavenner also noted that there has been "churn" among plan customers, with...

Eight of the 11 remaining Obamacare health insurance co-ops appear likely to fail this year, according to an analysis of financial documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twelve of the original 23 federally-financed co-ops have already collapsed. The co-op program was funded with $2.5 billion in 2010. “In general, there’s not a turnaround in sight. The same problems that plagued them before are continuing,” Thomas P. Miller, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously served as the senior health economist for the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told TheDCNF.

"Where is my 1095-A? This is what it must be like dealing with a government agency in a third world country." That was the lament on Twitter of just one poor citizen this week trying to get his tax records in order. Nationwide, hard-working Americans are struggling to meet the April 18 IRS filing deadline. Standing in the way: the bumbling Obamacare bureaucracy. In Minnesota, an estimated 18,000 people who were on health insurance plans last year offered through MNsure, the state Obamacare health insurance exchange, still haven't received their 1095-A form. It's the "health insurance marketplace statement" required to...

SAN ANTONIO — When Chris Doyle learned that his health insurance deductible would climb to $10,000 last year, he and his wife, both evangelical Christians, “spent a couple weeks just praying,” he said. Then they opted out of insurance altogether, joining something called a health care sharing ministry, which requires members to help cover one another’s major medical costs as they come up. While such nonprofit ministries have been around for decades, interest in them has grown since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, largely because the law exempts members from the requirement to have health insurance or pay...

Stung by losses under the federal health law, major insurers are seeking to sharply limit how policies are sold to individuals in ways that consumer advocates say seem to discriminate against the sickest and could hold down future enrollment. In recent days Anthem, Aetna and Cigna, all among the top five health insurers, told brokers they will stop paying them sales commissions to sign up most customers who qualify for new coverage outside the normal enrollment period, according to the companies and broker documents. Last year, these "special enrollment" clients were much more expensive than expected because lax enforcement allowed...

Sunday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance, or else pay a fine. That fine has gone up, causing even more financial stress on the uninsured and those who choose to opt out of health insurance. "I just cannot afford it in any way, shape, or form right now," 27-year-old Seth Valkonen said when talking about health insurance. Valkonen chooses to be uninsured by paying a one time fine for not having coverage instead of a monthly premium. "The penalty is cheaper than the overall total for the entire year," he said, Already on a tight budget, this...

Ted Cruz revealed on Thursday that he is not currently covered by any health insurance, chalking up the lack of coverage to Obamacare. "I'll tell you, you know who one of those millions of Americans is who's lost their health care because of Obamacare? That would be me," Cruz told a Manchester, New Hampshire, audience. "I don't have health care right now." Cruz explained that he had purchased an individual policy and that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas had canceled all of its individual policies in Texas, effective Dec. 31. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, who is on...

Newt Gingrich told Breitbart News that the country is in rebellion against the coastal power centers and that Donald Trump might be the candidate who can "kick down the doors" of the establishment. Former House speaker Gingrich weighed in on Trump's rise. "I think he represents a different era" in the same conservative movement, Gingrich said. "The system has become so incompetent and outrageously buracratic. The centers of power are so, so in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, that the whole rest of the country is in rebellion. And people are looking for somebody who can kick down...

The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the Affordable Care Act's public insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016. Maine's Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the cooperative.

When Obamacare was rammed through Congress without a single Republican vote way back in 2010, conservatives warned that the massive government program would ultimately require bailing out health insurance companies that gladly signed on. Fast forward five years and it's that time. Today on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are being pressured by the White House to provide money, or a bailout, to insurance companies losing money due to running government Obamacare exchanges. From The Hill:  White House desperately trying to add insurance company bailout to tax extenders bill. https://t.co/CUVd2IYFRC pic.twitter.com/EIwKuvJm2Y— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 9, 2015 Republicans and Democrats are close...

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The third open enrollment period for Obamacare is currently underway ahead of the New Year and the CEO of America's largest health insurance is expressing regret for getting involved in the government mandated entitlement program. From Bloomberg (bolding is mine):

UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurer, announced on Thursday that it was expecting to lose $600 million on Obamacare policies in 2016 from the health insurance exchange websites, and may terminate its Obamacare business by 2017. This was a sudden turnabout for the company. It was just a month ago that the company had said in an earnings call that they expected to expand their Obamacare coverage in 2017. According to Dave Wichmann, president and CFO, on October 15: The annual care ratio is being modestly affected by the performance of our new [Obamacare] public exchange benefit programs which...

A threat by the nation's largest health insurer to pull out of ObamaCare is a sign of the industry's growing angst about the viability of the federal exchanges, sources close to the industry say. UnitedHealthcare's warning sent new shockwaves across the healthcare sector after weeks of mounting anxiety among private insurers whose participation in the exchanges is critical to the viability of the president's signature law. In the last month alone, insurers have learned that the Obama administration has significantly lowered its expectations for new customers and will have far fewer federal dollars to help cushion insurer losses. "We've been...

The just-started enrollment period for ObamaCare exchange plans in 2016 is likely to yield one of two dismal outcomes. In the first, enrollment soars as people sign up in droves for the cheapest plan available to avoid the individual mandate tax penalty, whose minimum bite will spike from $325 to $695. Although the law's strongest backers might celebrate this, it's not clear why: Millions of modest-income individuals who opt for bronze would get policies with deductibles as high as $6,850. Yet the Obama administration's own analysis reveals that among those still uninsured, 80% have less than $1,000 in savings. Thus,...

I interviewed Dale Bellis the person who's taking health cost sharing to the next level. It's becoming a movement and way to avoid the ravages of Obamacare and rising health care expenses. Liberty Health Share is defined as a Health Care Sharing Ministry and is specifically exempted from Obamacare. I signed up in August of this year and I'm saving $950 per month off my health coverage since I found LibertyHealthShare. I now pay $199 per month, have a $500 deductible and am covered for up to $1 million per incident. And best of all no Obamacare! Click Here To...

My wife and I are early 60s retired, not yet on Medicare. The new Obamacare prices are out today and our monthly cost went from $1k/month to $1.9k/month. This is clearly over the 8% of income hardship limit for us so I should not have to pay any tax penalty for not buying Obamacare. I'd like to not completely be without some form of catastrophic coverage. Recently I've been researching short term health insurance. I can get a six month policy with lower deductibles than the Ocare for about $300/month. Am I missing something. Anyone else going this route?

A South Carolina health insurer has become the ninth insurance cooperative formed nationwide under the Affordable Care Act to fold. Consumers' Choice Health Insurance Co. said Thursday that it will not sell policies in 2016, a decision that will leave 67,000 individuals and business customers looking for new coverage. Ray Farmer, director of the South Carolina Department of Insurance, said Consumers' Choice and state regulators reached a mutual decision to shut down the company's business. He said the company was in a "financially hazardous condition." ... a solid new slogan for the entire law. The New York Times analyzes the...