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The last of the major American health insurers to have a big presence in the Obamacare marketplaces for 2017 warned Wednesday that it may not remain there for long if business doesn't improve. Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish, calling sales of Obamacare plans "disappointing" since 2013, said "Clearly, 2017 is a critical year as we continue to assess the long-term viability" of the insurer's presence on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. If it does scale back its Obamacare business, Anthem, which sells plans on ACA exchanges in 14 states, would join other big U.S. insurers — United Health Group, Aetna and Humana...

With insurers struggling to make money and access to plans severely limited, top South Carolina health officials warn the Obamacare health insurance marketplace is on the verge of collapse. Obamacare was supposed to create a competitive platform for customers to shop for coverage. But in most South Carolina counties, HealthCare.gov more closely resembles a monopoly dominated by the largest private health insurance company in the state - BlueCross BlueShield. Without reform, health officials say the entire system is in jeopardy. "The way it's going right now, it's probably going to implode in the next year or two," said Dr. Pat...

Dayton-based Premier Health is seeking an average 40 percent premium increase next year for the health plans its sells on Ohio's federally-run health insurance marketplace, while the area's largest marketplace insurer, CareSource, has proposed an average rate hike of about 14 percent, based on the latest rate filings with the Ohio Department of Insurance. Of the more than 266,000 Ohioans who signed up for marketplace plans by the end of open enrollment for 2016, about 88 percent, or nearly 235,000 consumers, were eligible to receive premium tax credits, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Obama administration on Wednesday moved to sharply limit short-term health insurance plans, which a growing number of consumers have been buying even though they offer less coverage than what the Affordable Care Act decreed, all people should have. The plans, designed for people in between jobs or in need of temporary insurance until they secure a regular policy, are cheaper than regular insurance plans. But they also can lack features that the health law requires for other policies, such as coverage for preexisting medical conditions, maternity care and prescription drugs. In addition, insurers are allowed to refuse to sell...

Republicans controlling the Senate are abandoning an effort to use their power over the federal purse strings to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The more pragmatic approach with a huge $164 billion spending measure reflects a hope by top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to remove veto bait from must-pass spending bills in hopes of advancing them more easily. …

Oklahoma leads the nation in price increases on the federal health insurance exchange, according to a national analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prices for silver health plans on the federal exchange rose 42 percent from 2015 to 2016. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only company that has been on the exchange for Oklahoma for several years. The marketplace is run by the federal government since Gov. Mary Fallin opted not to establish a state-run exchange when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as Obamacare, went into effect. Three others were on for a...

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...

Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created NY state exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: "We don't take Obamacare," the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president's signature health legislation. Though their insurance cards look the same as everyone else's the plans are often very different from those provided to most Americans by their employers....

The Maryland Health Connection is the state's Obamacare Marketplace. Monday, an agency press release noted that Maryland "has cut by 40 percent the number of Marylanders who were eligible for private insurance coverage when the state marketplace began three years ago." However, the breakdown of that statistic reveals that only 165,000 out of more than one million sign-ups are non-Medicaid enrollments. When the exchange opened three years ago, an estimated 405,000 people were eligible for private coverage. Three years later, that number has fallen to 240,000. But the press release notes that including Medicaid over one million have been enrolled...

A new Gallup Poll shows most Americans want the government to take on a bigger role in health care. More than 1,500 people from across the country were surveyed, and 58 percent favor replacing the provisions set up by the Affordable Care Act with a federally funded health care program. The ACA, or Obamacare, lets Americans buy insurance through the federal government, but the survey shows most citizens want the government to just pay for everything, or at least that’s what they’re saying now. In recent years, Americans have waffled on whether the government should pay their medical bills. Polls...

After raising its premiums for coverage on the Obamacare exchange by 36.3 percent for 2016, the state's dominant health insurer is heralding another increase of the "same order of magnitude" for 2017. BlueCross BlueShield claims it lost more than $150 million in 2015 when its rates were among the lowest in the land. But the 36.3 percent increase for 2016, the largest of any state, brings Tennessee rates to just about the national average. So how on Earth can costs be going up so exponentially to justify such a rate increase on the part of a nonprofit insurance company whose...

Humana wasn't kidding when it hinted last week of big premium hikes for 2017 in those ObamaCare markets where it remains. This year, the nation's fifth-largest insurer offers the cheapest bronze and silver plans in Michigan's largest market, including Detroit. But Humana has filed for a 50% premium hike for its low-cost silver plan. Meanwhile, Humana wants a 38% premium increase for its lowest-cost bronze plan. So far only Oregon, where insurers are requesting an average 27% premium hike, and Virginia, where insurers want an 18% hike, are the only two states to make all rate filings available.

Charlie Rose and three of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters had a good laugh Monday night while joking about the president’s infamous, oft-repeated false promise that under Obamacare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Obama said dozens of times in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act’s signing and enactment that no Americans who liked the insurance plan they had would lose it under the Affordable Care Act. In reality, millions of policies were canceled because of the law’s regulations, and Obama was forced to apologize to the American people. The infamous remark...

It already looks clear that many Obamacare insurance plans are going to raise their prices significantly. Over the last few years, average premium increases in the Obamacare markets have been lower than the increases for people who bought their own insurance in premiums before the Affordable Care Act. But several trends are coming together that suggest that pattern will break when plan premiums are announced in early November. Many plans may increase prices by 10 percent, or more. Over the last two years, I’ve written articles warning against scary headlines that exaggerate premium increases. Next year, those scary headlines are...

State lawmakers in California are circulating legislation that would open the door for illegal immigrants to buy health insurance from Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange. State Sen. Ricardo Lara introduced the bill to pave the way for illegal immigrants to purchase health plans from Covered California. Many people believe this move to not grant money makes the legislation mainly symbolic because most illegal immigrants would not practically be able to pay for health premiums on their own, according to Kaiser Health. Covered California staff personnel presented an analysis of the proposed legislation to the organization's board last month and...

It's still early days for the Affordable Care Act. But it may be dismaying to some consumers to learn that it appears 2017 may bring another year of big rate hikes. The first two states to release insurers' premium proposals for next year suggest that individual insurance premiums could rise by as much as one-third. In Oregon, the steepest requested rate hike is 32.3 percent. In Virginia, five of the biggest insurers are asking for increases of 9.4 percent to 37.1 percent for individual policies. The proposed rate hikes follow an average increase of 8 percent for 2016, and are...

Lynn Kersey has some advice for pregnant women who bought health insurance policies from Covered California and want to keep them: Don't report your pregnancy to the agency. Why? Two of Kersey's clients with Covered California health plans recently were thrown into Medi-Cal - the state's health program for low-income residents - without their consent or prior notice after they reported their pregnancies to the state's health insurance exchange. The two women are among about 1,900 across the state who were automatically transferred from the exchange to Medi-Cal since October, even though they were supposed to have the option to...

Health Care: “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” That was President Obama in a speech before Congress back in Sept. 2009, pitching the health reform plan he’d sign six months later. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get his wish.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Thursday that it is expanding Medicaid coverage to give "access to health care" to 96,000 people who face a prison sentence or have been incarcerated - or "justice-involved" individuals - as part of the federally designated National Re-Entry Week. "Today, HHS strengthened access to health care for individuals transitioning from incarceration back to their communities," the press release stated. "New Medicaid guidance released today updates decades-old policy and clarifies that individuals who are currently on probation, parole or in home confinement are not considered inmates of a public institution." "It...

Millions of poor Americans have signed up for no-cost health insurance that they could have gotten even without the passage of Obamacare. In recent years, the publicity of Obamacare has driven them to sign up in droves, so much so that economists and health policy wonks have dubbed the phenomenon the "woodwork effect," or the "welcome mat" population. This group turned out to be larger than anyone anticipated. A working paper released Monday finds that 43 percent of those who gained insurance in 2014 came out of the woodwork. According to MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, one of the authors...