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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-surprise-americans-fail-even-basic-questions-about-obamacare-health-insurance/article/2555123

No surprise: Americans fail even basic questions about Obamacare, health insurance



[...]

“Younger people, those who use health care less frequently, minorities, people with lower incomes and those with less education have less knowledge about health insurance because all of these groups are more likely to be uninsured,” said study co-author Kathryn A. Paez. “And, they are the people most likely to use the health insurance marketplaces.”

Baldo

Oct 26 2014, 06:20 PM

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The Early Impact of the Affordable Care Act State-By-State
Amanda E. Kowalski

NBER Working Paper No. 20597
Issued in October 2014
NBER Program(s): AG HC PE

...experiencing welfare losses of approximately $245 per participant ...

http://www.nber.org/papers/w20597

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http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/family-doctors-push-for-a-bigger-piece-of-the-health-care-pie/

Family Doctors Push For A Bigger Piece Of The Health Care Pie

Family medicine doctors are joining forces to win a bigger role in health care – and be paid for it.

Eight family-physician-related groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, have formed Family Medicine for America’s Health, a coalition to sweeten the public perception of what they do and advance their interests through state and federal policies.

The launch of their five-year, $20 million campaign Thursday comes at a critical time for primary-care doctors. Thanks to the health law, millions more people can seek care with newly gained insurance....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/as-insurers-try-to-limit-costs-providers-hit-patients-with-more-separate-fees.html

As Insurers Try to Limit Costs, Providers Hit Patients With More Separate Fees

Leo Boudreau of Massachusetts was thrilled to find a psychologist in his insurance network to treat his teenage daughter for emotional stress related to a medical condition. ... But he was surprised when the bill for each visit contained two charges: the approximately $100 he expected to see for the therapist — and a similar fee for the room, which was not covered. ... As insurers ratchet down payments to physicians and hospitals, these providers are pushing back with a host of new charges. ... as insurers and providers fight over revenue in an era of cost control, patients often find themselves caught in the middle, nickel-and-dimed...

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/10/24/obama-medicaid-expansion-utah-indiana-mike-pence-gary-herbert/17826875/

Obama Getting Mixed News On Medicaid Expansions

President Obama is getting some good news and some not-so-good news as his administration tries to persuade Republican governors to sign off on Medicaid expansions.

For example, in Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert says he has a deal on a Medicaid compromise.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence -- a potential Republican presidential candidate -- may nix a Medicaid deal...

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http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/reno-finds-medicaid-expansion-tough-hand-to-play/

Reno Finds Medicaid Expansion Tough Hand To Play

For Carolyn Oatman, enrolling in Medicaid this year was “a dream come true.”

Uninsured since she lost her job five years ago in this desert gambling city, Oatman, 57, often couldn’t afford the drugs to control her asthma and high blood pressure. She would sell her blood plasma to scrape together enough money to see a doctor.

Since she signed up for Medicaid, though, her care is free, including her medicines. But there’s a downside: It can take two months to get a doctor’s appointment at a local community health center, or an all-day wait if she just shows up.

[...]

Though happy to have coverage, many new enrollees are frustrated by the lack of providers willing to see them, which can mean long waits for care, according to interviews with patients, doctors and local health officials.

Sometimes, when Oatman needs to see a doctor in a hurry, she drives to the nearest emergency room – getting care where it costs taxpayers the most.

“I love it on Medicaid because now I can go the emergency room when I need to and don’t have to worry about the bill,” said Oatman

[...]

In fact, Medicaid enrollment statewide grew from 330,000 people in September 2013 to more than 601,000 in August 2014— an 82 percent increase, according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. That compares to average enrollment growth of about 20 percent in the states that expanded the program.

Among the reasons for the rapid take-up in Nevada were its high uninsured rate and previously stingy Medicaid eligibility guidelines, which excluded childless adults altogether and covered jobless parents with dependent children only if they made below 24 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $5,700 for a family of four.

[...]

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/27/insurers-aca-exchange-plans-lower-reimbursements-doctors/17747839/

Some doctors wary of taking insurance exchange patients

Now that many people finally have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, some are running into a new problem: They can't find a doctor who will take them as patients.

Because these exchange plans often have lower reimbursement rates, some doctors are limiting how many new patients they take with these policies, physician groups and other experts say.

"The exchanges have become very much like Medicaid," says Andrew Kleinman, a plastic surgeon and president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. "Physicians who are in solo practices have to be careful to not take too many patients reimbursed at lower rates or they're not going to be in business very long."

Kleinman says his members complain rates can be 50% lower than commercial plans.

[...]

Among complaints from doctors about how the whole system is working:

• If consumers have a federally subsidized plan, they get a 90-day grace period before plans are canceled if they don't pay their premiums. That means doctors have to pursue patients to pay for their services for most of that time as insurance companies refuse to pay the claims.

• Plans sold on the exchanges with the lowest premiums require consumers to pay the most out of pocket. Many of these customers have insurance for the first time and don't understand how much they have to pay, so doctor's offices have to spend a great deal of time explaining benefits packages, says Ripley Hollister, a primary care doctor in Colorado Springs.

[...]

Baldo

Oct 29 2014, 10:09 PM

Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

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4. HHS requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is the number one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Currently, about a million people have failed to pay their premiums and had their plans canceled.

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http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/how-obamacare-went-south-in-mississippi/
By Sarah Varney |

How Obamacare Went South In Mississippi[/b]

In the country’s unhealthiest state, the failure of Obamacare is a group effort.

The lunch rush at Tom’s on Main in Yazoo City, Mississippi, had come to a close, and the waitresses, having cleared away plates of shrimp and cheese grits, seasoned turnip greens and pitchers of sweet tea, were retreating to the counter to cash out and count their tips.

It didn’t take long: The $6.95 lunchtime specials didn’t land them much, and the job certainly didn’t come with benefits like health insurance. For waitress Wylene Gary, 54, being uninsured was unnerving, but she didn’t try to buy coverage on her own until the Affordable Care Act forced her to. She didn’t want to be a lawbreaker. Months earlier, she had gone online to the federal government’s new website, signed up and paid her first monthly premium of $129. But when her new insurance card arrived in the mail, she was flabbergasted.

“It said, $6,000 deductible and 40 percent co-pay,” Gary told me at the check-out counter, her timid drawl giving way to strident dismay. Confused, she called to speak to a representative for the insurer Magnolia Health. “’You tellin’ me if I get a hospital bill for $100,000, I gotta pay $40,000?’ And she said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”

Never mind that the Magnolia worker was wrong — her out-of-pocket costs were legally capped at $6,350. Gary figured with a hospital bill that high, she would have to file for bankruptcy anyway. So really, she thought, what was the point?

“This ain’t worth a tooth,” she said.

She canceled her coverage.

[...]

To piece together what had happened in Mississippi, I traveled there this summer. For six days, I went from Delta towns to the Tennessee border to the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, and what I found was a series of cascading problems: bumbling errors and misinformation ginned up by the law’s tea party opponents; ignorance and disorganization; a haunting racial divide; and, above all, the unyielding ideological imperative of conservative politics. This, I found, was a story about the tea party and its influence over a state Republican Party in transition, where a public feud between Gov. Phil Bryant and the elected insurance commissioner, both Republicans who oppose Obamacare, forced the state to shut down its own insurance marketplace, even as the Obama administration in Washington refused to step into the fray. By the time the federal government offered the required coverage on its balky healthcare.gov website, 70 percent of Mississippians confessed they knew almost nothing about it. “We would talk to people who say, ‘I don’t want anything about Obamacare. I want the Affordable Care Act,’” remembered Tineciaa Harris, one of the so-called navigators trained to help Mississippians sign up for health insurance. “And we’d have to explain to them that it’s the same thing.”

[...]