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Mal Allison

Online Health Exchanges for Small Businesses Hit Snag - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3796404579099310270573146.html

online health exchanges small biz

shared by Mal Allison on 27 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration said in April it was scaling back the complexity of the small-business marketplace by delaying by one year a feature to allow employees of such businesses to pick from a range of plans, instead of the company selecting one on workers' behalf.
  • Business owners will be allowed to submit a paper application using a PDF form starting Tuesday, but they won't be able to complete an electronic application until a few weeks later, the official said. A call center for businesses will open Tuesday for employers who want help completing the paper application.
  • Mal Allison on 27 Sep 13
     
    The Obama administration said in April it was scaling back the complexity of the small-business marketplace by delaying by one year a feature to allow employees of such businesses to pick from a range of plans, instead of the company selecting one on workers' behalf.
Mal Allison

Hospital, providers to develop state's only member-owned health plan - Health & wellnes... - 0 views

www.bostonglobe.com/...story.html

member-owned insurance Tufts Medical Center minuteman Health Initiative

shared by Mal Allison on 15 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • The Minuteman plan would streamline billing processes to save on administrative costs and allow providers to work more closely with employers, organizers said. Information about smoking cessation or workers’ weight collected through employer wellness programs is not typically shared with doctors. “Imagine working closely with an employer who can help us gather data and, with employees’ permission, to be able to share that data with their primary care providers,” said Dr. Jeff Lasker, chief executive of the Tufts physician group, New England Quality Care Alliance.
  • Partners HealthCare last year announced plans to acquire Neighborhood Health Plan, which mostly serves low-income people. Steward Health Care has worked with Fallon Community Health Plan to develop plans offered at reduced prices through a small business cooperative created by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.
Mal Allison

Business Boondoggle: Shedding the Cost of Health Care | The Fiscal Times - 0 views

www.thefiscaltimes.com/...ggle-Shedding-Cost-Health-Care

business portability true cost of insurance

shared by Mal Allison on 19 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • he actions of these other employers don’t detract from the unique nature of Walgreens’ decision. Two months earlier, the retailer announced its partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services to extol the benefits of Obamacare to its employees and its customers. Their website still features the effort, and brochures continue to be distributed even while the corporation itself realizes that compliance must force it to abandon employer-provided health insurance for the people in the stores distributing the brochures to customers.
  • With the CBO predicting that rising health-care costs would increase at twice the rate of other federal spending, the same increase in costs will now be borne almost entirely by employees.  Finally, it appears that the private-exchange option will satisfy the employer mandate, which means that the employees cannot bail out of these private exchanges in order to qualify for federal subsidies, which prevents the employers from having to pay increasing fines for non-compliance.
  • limit the liability of the third-party payer.
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  • s opposed to the Independent Payment Advisory Board and its “death panel”-like power. 
  • nce, and now employees will get more than just one or two options at open enrollment, with twenty-five plans available in the Aon exchange.
  • This arrangement makes the consumer the customer of the exchanges from the very beginning.  A termination would only impact the subsidy, which the consumer/employee could negotiate as part of his compensation package with his next employer. 
  • is to restore price signals on health care back to the consumer through the elimination of third-party payers and middlemen. 
Mal Allison

HEALTH REFORM: Expect Pluses, Minuses for Those With Job-Based Coverage - iVillage - 0 views

www.ivillage.com/...4-a-547763

ACA employer-based insurance

shared by Mal Allison on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Beginning in 2014, for instance, the reform package prohibits employer-sponsored health plans from excluding people from coverage based on pre-existing health conditions
  • It also makes larger employers responsible for offering medical coverage. Beginning Jan. 1, 2015, businesses with more than 50 workers must offer health insurance to full-time workers and dependents or pay penalties.
  • annual limits will be banned completely in 2014.
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  • Also, if you have an adult child under age 26 and your employer health plan offers coverage for dependents, the plan must allow your son or daughter to enroll. Spiro called th
  • The law also requires most employer health plans to offer certain preventive services at no cost to the employee.
  • Effective Jan. 1, 2014, the law allows employers to boost rewards and penalties (such as premium discounts or surcharges) to 30 percent of the total plan premium, up from 20 percent.
  • ne in five employers has boosted employees' share of health plan premiums,
  • HealthCare Advocates, which helps consumers resolve health insurance problems. "I think at the end of the day, everybody's going to be paying more," he said.
  • e IFEBP survey also estimates that about 16 percent of employers are trimming worker hours to part-time status so fewer employees will qualify for health-plan benefits.
  • Beginning in 2015, large employers -- those with at least 50 full-time workers -- must provide health insurance to employees who log an average of 30 or more hours a week or pay penalties.
  • A study published earlier this year by the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education found that 2.3 million workers nationwide -- particularly retail and restaurant workers -- are at risk of losing hours as a result of the new law.
  • A growing number of midsize and large employers -- 25 percent in 2014 and 44 percent in 2015 -- are also saying they're likely to discontinue health coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees, a new Towers Watson & Co. survey found.
  • Starting in 2018, the law imposes a steep tax on employer plans with premiums exceeding $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family -- plans that are typically offered to high-wage earner
  • About 17 percent of employers are redesigning their high-cost plans to avoid this so-called "Cadillac tax," while 40 percent are considering i
  • The percentage of Americans receiving health insurance on the job or through a family member's job slipped from 69.7 percent in 2000 to 59.5 percent in 2011,
  • Staggering increases in health insurance premiums also contributed to the decline, resulting in fewer employers offering coverage and fewer employees accepting it.
  • Congressional Budget Office estimates suggest that as many as 7 million people will lose job-based coverage by 2017 a
  • But just 26 percent are confident that they will be offering health-care benefits a decade from no
  • r Center, has summarized provisions of the Affordable Care Act affecting employer-sponsored insurance.
  • To read part one of the series, how to navigate the new health insurance exchanges, click here.
  • Mal Allison on 01 Oct 13
     
    Experts say smaller companies that employ 50 or more workers and currently provide health insurance may drop coverage because it would be cheaper to pay fines than maintain coverage for all of their workers. Most large employers (with more than 1,000 employees) remain committed to providing health benefits for the next five years, according to an employer survey by Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health. But just 26 percent are confident that they will be offering health-care benefits a decade from now. Meanwhile, a number of large employers are eyeing private health insurance exchanges as a way to continue providing job-based coverage while controlling spending on health benefits. Much like the public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, private exchanges represent a new way for employees and families to shop for group health coverage and other benefits. Instead of offering a limited number of health plans, the employer would give workers a set amount of money to buy their own coverage. Kaiser, who works in Gallagher Benefit Services' Mount Laurel, N.J., office, anticipates a slow migration toward private exchanges. "I don't think it's going to be a mass disruption of employer-sponsored plans where they all go, 'I'm out of the game,'" he said. More information The University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, has summarized provisions of the Affordable Care Act affecting employer-sponsored insurance.
Mal Allison

SHOP exchanges -- hurry up and wait! - Articles - Employee Benefit News - 0 views

ebn.benefitnews.com/...rry-up-and-wait-2735263-1.html

SHOP small business exchanges

shared by Mal Allison on 04 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Keep in mind these exchanges were at the crux of health care reform — a key component that garnered the support of many who were fighting on behalf of small businesses. 
Mal Allison

Some Massachusetts small businesses could see health insurance premiums rise under Obam... - 0 views

www.masslive.com/...massachusetts_small_busin.html

massachusetts businesses health insurance rise

shared by Mal Allison on 16 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Next year, Massachusetts will be allowed to take into account two-thirds of its soon-to-be-disallowed rating factors. It can use one-third of the disallowed factors in 2015.
  • that requires the state to formally request a waiver from the federal government from the ratings factor provision. Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick signed the bill on Friday, and the state is working to comply with the waiver request provision.
Mal Allison

Bare Bones Health Plans Expected To Survive Health Law - Kaiser Health News - 0 views

www.kaiserhealthnews.org/...alth-insurance-health-law.aspx

bare bones health plans mini med ACA

shared by Mal Allison on 26 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Proposed and final rules issued this spring surprised many by failing to bar large employers from offering insurance policies that could exclude benefits such as hospitalization. Offering bare-bones policies may result in some fines, but that expense could be less than the cost of offering traditional medical coverage. For large employers, "the feds imposed no minimum standard on how skimpy that coverage can be other than to say, in essence, it's got to be more robust than a dental plan or a vision plan," said Ed Fensholt, a senior vice president at insurance broker Lockton Companies. "We had customers looking at offering some relatively inexpensive and skimpy plan designs to satisfy the individual mandate at modest cost.”
  • The bare-bones plans cannot be offered to small businesses with fewer than 50 workers, or to individuals buying coverage through new online marketplaces that open for enrollment Oct. 1. But benefit experts expect some larger firms that buy outside the marketplaces or that self-insure to consider them. 
  • Skimpy insurance under the Affordable Care Act won’t be quite the same as it is now. Under the new rules, capping the dollar value of annual benefits isn't allowed, but excluding entire categories from coverage - such as hospital stays - is permitted, say benefit consultants. That's another way of keeping costs down.
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  • he law says only that large-employer policies must cover preventive care such as blood pressure tests or vaccines with no co-pays for consumers. So the plan could cover dental, vision and preventive cancer screenings, but possibly not the treatment or hospital care a patient could need if diagnosed with an illness.
  • rue, the health act requires policies to include coverage for 10 broad categories of “essential health benefits,” such as hospitalization and mental health services, but that provision applies only to plans sold to small businesses and individuals.  Larger firms and self-insured employers are exempt.
  • .” Employers offering these sorts of plans do face some risks, experts said. If a large employer doesn’t offer “minimum essential coverage,” it’s potentially liable for fines of $2,000 per full-time worker after the first 30 workers.
  • they must pay $3,000 for each worker who receives subsidies to buy coverage.
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