Baldo

Sep 16 2014, 08:37 AM

I have been listening to a few pundits the last few days and what they are saying it is becoming clear that businesses are not adding to their staff not wanting to reach a 50 level of employees.

Thus they don't become subjected to Obama-care mandates for a while longer. They are also reducing employees hours to minus 30 hours.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/15/cms-affordable-care-act-announcement/15679611/

Feds give immigrants more time on health care

Consumers facing questions about their immigration status or income to qualify for health insurance plans have a few extra weeks to provide more information before losing coverage or subsidies, a Department of Health and Human Services official said Monday.

About 115,000 of 966,000 people who bought plans on HealthCare.gov and owed more information about their immigration status have unresolved issues, Andy Slavitt, principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said. These people were given a deadline of Sept. 5 to submit information — they now have until Sept. 30 to provide proof of their citizenship, or they will lose coverage.

After that date, those people can reapply if they can prove citizenship even though the open enrollment period is closed.

The other 851,000 people either have had their cases resolved, or the cases are in the process of being resolved. Slavitt would not comment on how the resolved cases were decided.

"The good news is they have been able to resolve one way or another most of the problem applications where federal databases could not verify income or legal status," says health care consultant Kip Piper, a former state and federal Medicare official. "Bad news is the CMS data remain opaque, raising more questions than answers on how the effort to resolve cases will impact those individuals and families."

Still unknown: How many people have lost their subsidized coverage or will have to pay back money to the Internal Revenue Service.

CMS says it is waiting to hear back from 279,000 people who need to provide more documentation about their income so it's clear federal subsidies were warranted. These people must submit outstanding documents by Sept. 30. Those who shouldn't have gotten the subsidies will face tax liability, Slavitt says.

Ronnell Nolan, CEO of the trade group Health Agents of America, says she thinks it would be "political suicide" for the government to cancel the insurance of people with immigration issues. Besides, she says, this was supposed to be taken care of.

"During the initial enrollment process, citizenship was supposed to be verified during the identify proofing, and income was always supposed to be verified at tax time," Nolan says. "I continue to question the reason the marketplace has spent so much time and money doing something that was supposedly already done."

Slavitt said the Affordable Care Act is "working for millions of Americans," but he acknowledged, "As we look to the future, we recognize that we still have work to do."

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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-health-exchange-enroll-20140916-story.html

California health insurance exchange unveils ad campaign and outreach

Preparing for the second year of Obamacare enrollment, California unveiled new television ads and handed out $14.6 million to community groups for consumer outreach..

The state-run insurance exchange, Covered California, said the new grant funds are in addition to $33.4 million that has already been given to clinics, unions, schools and nonprofit groups helping with enrollment.

State officials said the new grant money will support more than 220 organizations statewide working on consumer education and enrollment assistance as part of the Affordable Care Act....

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/16/obama-admin-pushes-back-at-report-on-abortion-and-/print/

Obama admin. pushes back at report on abortion and Obamacare as GOP outcry rises
By Tom Howell Jr. - The Washington Times - Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will make sure states and insurers understand the ban on using federal funds for abortion, but pushed back at Republican claims that a government audit report proves pro-life advocates' worst fears about Obamacare.

No funds are permitted to cover abortions or administer plans that cover the service, as the Affordable Care Act requires issuers to collect a separate payment for coverage of the services, according to an official at the Health and Human Services Department.

A report from the Government Accountability Office late Monday found inconsistencies in how that payment is itemized, if at all, on invoices for people in plans that insure abortion, leading Republicans to conclude that President Obama misled them and that subsidized abortion has become inevitable under the health care law.

The administration said it will make sure administrators are up to speed on the rules.

"[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] will work with stakeholders, including states and issuers, so they fully understand and comply with the federal law prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortions," agency spokesman Ben Wakana said.

The agency is expected to issue further guidance on compliance in the coming days. Officials stressed the role of state regulators in making sure issuers comply with the rules and noted the GAO did not make judgments about CMS's oversight of the federal requirements.

But the outcry among conservatives and Catholic groups intensified Tuesday.

"The Act's alleged requirements regulating abortion coverage do not exist or are widely ignored," said Cardinal Seán O'Malley of Boston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Many health plans do not inform enrollees about their inclusion of abortion coverage; they do not tell them how much they are being charged for such coverage; and they do not charge a 'separate payment' for abortions that is distinct from the premium payment eligible for federal tax subsidies."

Altogether, more than 1,000 Obamacare plans offer abortion coverage in 28 states that don't prohibit it, the GAO said, including 95 percent of the plans in California and all of the plans in Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii and New Jersey.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the government is supposed to ensure at least two multistate plans that don't include abortion coverage are available in those states. There is a four-year transitional period for the administration to implement multistate plans, so it is not yet a violation of the law at this juncture, according to a congressional aide.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican who opposes taxpayer funding for abortions, said the sheer number of exchange plans that cover abortion, with taxpayer-subsidized premiums, shows government money is going to pay for the procedure despite Mr. Obama's insistence that wouldn't happen.

The president made the pledge so he could secure key votes for his signature health care law.

Baldo

Sep 18 2014, 06:37 AM

Panel Urges Overhauling Health Care at End of Life

The country’s system for handling end-of-life care is largely broken and should be overhauled at almost every level, a national panel concluded in a report released on Wednesday.

The 21-member nonpartisan committee, appointed by the Institute of Medicine, the independent research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, called for sweeping change.

“The bottom line is the health care system is poorly designed to meet the needs of patients near the end of life,” said David M. Walker, a Republican and a former United States comptroller general, who was a chairman of the panel. “The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly.”.

Many of the report’s recommendations could be accomplished without legislation. For example, the panel urged insurers to reimburse health care providers for conversations with patients on advance care planning. Medicare, which covers 50 million Americans and whose members account for about 80 percent of deaths each year, is considering doing just that, prompted by a recent request from the American Medical Association. Some private insurers are already covering such conversations, and many more would if Medicare did...snipped

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/end-of-life-care-needs-sweeping-overhaul-panel-says.html

Those darn Seniors who live too long.

Abort babies, abort those Seniors, of course Obama & his staff will get gold-plated care for life

abb

Sep 18 2014, 06:42 AM

Death Panels. Sarah Palin told us this stuff years ago.

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‘It’s inexcusable’! Fed-up citizen details her ‘Obamacare nightmare’