Free Republic

Colorado's biggest nonprofit health insurer announced its closure Friday, forcing nearly 83,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016. Colorado HealthOP announced Friday that the state Division of Insurance has de-certified it as an eligible insurance company. That's because the cooperative relied on federal support, and federal authorities announced last month they wouldn't be able to pay most of what they owed in a program designed to help health insurance co-ops get established. The Colorado announcement makes the co-op the seventh in the nation to collapse. Similar nonprofit insurers have already failed in Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa/Nebraska, Nevada, New York...

In contrast with the early stumbles in most of the country, New York State, almost from the start, has provided a textbook lesson in how to make the Affordable Care Act work. But it has done so by making some tough decisions. But New York also took some aggressive and unpopular steps that few other states have taken, by creating a highly centralized system limiting consumer choice, essentially giving insurance seekers little incentive to shop off the exchange. As a result, most New Yorkers who are not insured through an employer are effectively barred from choosing any doctors or hospitals...

If you’re a mom of grown children, this is for you.Did you know that the Obama administration and the state of Rhode Island are counting on you to nag your kids into signing up for Obamacare?Good old-fashioned guilt and annoyance—that’s the ticket, apparently. But just giving your kids a call or sending them an email isn’t enough.Rhode Island’s newest strategy is urging mothers to sign up for social networking and even online dating sites to send messages to their children.The state’s Obamacare exchange has put together the “Nag Toolkit.” The website isn’t subtle. It says, “learn how to be where...

“It’s going to be smoother in places like Maryland where governors are working to implement it rather than fight it. (Applause.)” — President Barack Obama, Sept. 26, 2013Five months in, Maryland’s state exchange is still barely limping along. Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who headed up the exchange build, has no apologies. The exchange director resigned after she went on a Cayman vacation while the site was imploding. The situation is bad enough that this essentially one-party state has devolved into a fight over whether they should abandon their $100 million dysfunctional site for the federal site, and Democrats running for...

A District of Columbia federal judge rejected a lawsuit Wednesday that challenged tax credits for Obamacare coverage in the 36 states with federal-run exchanges – one of the most significant remaining legal fights over President Barack Obama’s health care law.The four individuals who brought the lawsuit, Halbig v. Sebelius, had argued that the IRS overstepped its legal authority by allowing federal-run exchanges to provide tax credits for people who purchase health insurance. They contended that the Affordable Care Act only allows for state-run exchanges to access such credits and that Congress purposefully designed the law that way to incentivize states...

New York is enrolling a significant number of young subscribers on its health insurance exchange, but many of those already enrolled have raised questions about rules that limit which doctors they can see, or are having problems finding out if their doctors are covered, according to testimony at a State Senate hearing on Monday. New York has been one of the most successful states in signing up people for new insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act and, as of Dec. 24, the deadline for enrollment for coverage beginning New Year’s Day, 230,624 had enrolled. As of Sunday, that number...

Paul D. Donahue and his wife, Angela, are among more than a million Americans who have signed up for health coverage through the federal insurance exchange. Mr. Donahue has a card in his wallet from his insurer to prove it. But when he tried to use it to get a flu shot and fill prescriptions this week, local pharmacies could not confirm his coverage, so he left without his medications. Similar problems are occurring daily in doctors’ offices and drugstores around the country as consumers try to use insurance coverage that took effect on Jan. 1 under the Affordable Care...

My mother is being shoved off her plan (1-2014). She's 90 and I have called them twice to get her onto their BS Supplement and Part D. Both times, people with heavy accents answer and say they'll research ... while the line immediately goes to dead air! NICE For THIS she worked her entire life!

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011. Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for...

The Obama administration has awarded Iowa more than $7.7 million to begin setting up a health insurance exchange, a central element of the controversial federal health-care reform law. The grant comes even as Iowa is one of the states challenging the law’s constitutionality. Obama administration officials said Tuesday that Iowa is one of 13 states that have been awarded a total of $220 million. The administration said the state will use the funds for a “financial assessment and budget analysis to determine the financial resources required to provide assistance to individuals and small businesses, coverage appeals and complaints.” It also...

Last week, Cato Institute health care policy expert Michael Cannon testified before the Missouri Senate’s Interim Committee on Health Insurance Exchanges on why that state should not create an Obamacare exchange. His arguments apply just as much to Michigan, including this excerpt describing how creating an exchange will help entrench Obamacare. From testimony delivered on Sept. 15, 2011 Some opponents of the law nevertheless argue for creating an exchange so that states can be prepared in case the law is not overturned or repealed. Yet creating an exchange would entrench the law and make it less likely to be repealed...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain, is planning to start selling health insurance to customers this fall. Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens (WAG, Fortune 500) will sell health insurance products with different price ranges and coverage levels from coast-to-coast through a private health insurance exchange, according to people familiar with the matter.

Unsustainable Health Insurance Plans Sarah Carlsruh, December 10, 2009 On Sunday, December 6th, President Barack Obama paid a visit to Senators on Capitol Hill to urge them to pass health care reform. Senate leaders are working to rally 60 supporting votes to get this bill passed. This health care bill will purportedly reform the admittedly flawed health insurance market through the innovation of an insurance exchange. Will this exchange be an improvement? Also, will enforcement flaws inherent in the exchange make the health care bill even less economically sustainable? According to the WhiteHouse.gov, “The health insurance exchange is a marketplace...