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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

More Employers Overhaul Health Benefits - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4906304579038661121699366.html

employers health private exchange

shared by Mal Allison on 04 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Operators of employer health-insurance marketplaces say many workers pick cheaper coverage than they previously had and that is one way the exchange approach can save money.
  • In an exchange run by Liazon Corp. that has around 60,000 people enrolled, about 75% of the workers have chosen less-expensive plans, accepting bigger deductibles and other out-of-pocket charges, as well as smaller choices of health-care providers and restrictions such as primary-care gatekeepers. "They want value for their money," said Alan Cohen, Liazon's chief strategy officer.
  • Accenture ACN +0.08% PLC projects that around a million Americans will get employer health coverage through such marketplaces next year, and the number will increase to 40 million by 2018.
  • Mal Allison on 04 Sep 13
     
    Operators of employer health-insurance marketplaces say many workers pick cheaper coverage than they previously had and that is one way the exchange approach can save money.
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.
Mal Allison

Detroit wants to unload 19,389 retirees into Obamacare's marketplaces - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...s-into-obamacares-marketplaces

Detroit retirees health costs ACA obamacare healthcare

shared by Mal Allison on 20 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • A good chunk of Detroit’s debt problem is a health-costs problem. The Detroit Free Press notes that the city has $5.7 billion in unfunded retiree health-care liabilities, nearly a third of the city’s debt.
  • . It plans to transition its 19,389 retirees into the health law’s new marketplaces, saving the city somewhere between $27.5 million and $40 million annually.
  • . One report from the Pew Center for the States looked at 61 cities across the country and found that, taken together, they had $126.2 billion in health benefits promised to retirees. Only 6 percent of that amount – $8 billion – currently has funding.
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  • econd, health-care costs have grown more rapidly than the rest of the economy (although they have slowed a bit in the past few years). That means some cities, such as Detroit, have an especially large bill to pay for retirees’ health-care benefits.
  • hicago announced plans in May to phase out retiree coverage, either moving workers into the exchanges or, if they’re old enough, having them rely entirely on the Medicare program. Detroit
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

Companies shift more health costs onto workers | The Tennessean | tennessean.com - 0 views

www.tennessean.com/...BUSINESS

companies shift health costs workers

shared by Mal Allison on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Health insurance costs ate 7.7 percent of total payroll expenses for private-sector employers in 2012, according to the NIHM study.
  • n 2013, individuals paid, on average, $5,900 in total annual premiums for employer-sponsored coverage. On average, family plans cost more than $16,300. “With employees’ costs for medical coverage growing much more quickly than general inflation, hourly earnings and family income, some workers are inevitably (being) priced out of coverage,” the study said.
  • 2018, 40 million American employees will be enrolled in private exchanges
Mal Allison

Employers Turn to Private Health Exchanges to Cut Costs - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...lth-exchange-to-cut-costs.html

employers exchanges private

shared by Mal Allison on 19 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • One-third of U.S. employers plan to move their workers’ health-care coverage to a private exchange in the next few years, a survey found, following the le
  • Health spending in the U.S. is expected to increase more than 6 percent this year and 6.2 percent annually from 2015-2022 as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes full effect and millions of Americans gain insurance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
  • Under Obamacare, companies that don’t offer coverage for their employees will be fined $2,000 per employee. Employers spend $6,000 per employee on average, so d
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  • They found that 5 percent of the companies surveyed may drop employee health-care coverage in the next three to five years, an increase from 1 percent now
  • About 38 percent of the companies surveyed by Aon said they would offer no benefits to part-time workers within the next three to five years.
  • Only 25 percent of large employers offer subsidized retiree health benefits, Aon said, down from about 50 percent in 2004.
Mal Allison

Under Obamacare, more mental health coverage for workers - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-94a2-6c66b668ea55_story.html

obamacare mental health coverage

shared by Mal Allison on 18 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans offered in the new marketplaces will have to cover a core set of services called “essential health benefits.” Included on the list of 10 benefits are mental-health and substance-use disorder services, which include behavioral health treatment, counseling and psychotherapy. Specifically, as part of what’s considered preventive services, plans will also cover alcohol-misuse screening and counseling, depression screening for adults and adolescents, domestic and interpersonal violence screening for women, and behavioral assessments for children.
Mal Allison

How are health costs impacting retirees? - Local - The Shelby Star - 0 views

www.shelbystar.com/...ts-impacting-retirees-1.233690

health costs retirees private exchanges

shared by Mal Allison on 14 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • 29 percent of companies with at least 5,000 workers are considering turning over benefits for workers or retirees to private exchanges.
Mal Allison

ACA expansion leaving out millions of blacks, single moms, poverty-level workers - Fier... - 0 views

www.fiercehealthfinance.com/...2013-10-03

ACA working poor Medicaid

shared by Mal Allison on 04 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Mal Allison on 04 Oct 13
     
    nd half of low-wage employees will be unable to obtain coverage, according to the NYT.
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.
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