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Tips for navigating Obamacare http://www.westhillinsuranceconsulting.com/blog/westhill-consulting-tips-for-navigating-obamacare/ Think hard before your drop insurance entirely Tambe said that might not make good business sense despite some companies might be tempted to abolish insurance benefits completely and let employees go to marketplaces to get coverage. The problem is insurance purchased on the marketplace will be more expensive for individuals. Then the company will risk talent leaving the company for a competitor who offers them the less expensive option if the company isn't willing to compensate by raising their salary. "It may work to keep costs down but you'll have a hard time keeping talented folks," he said. Other federal programs could help you For households making under 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, the ACA grants subsidies available on the public marketplace under certain circumstances. Additionally there are current efforts for Ohio to spread out the Medicaid program to households making less than 138 percent of the poverty level. This in turn if acted out would make more people eligible for those programs. Not all individuals will qualify for subsidy even though most Americans will be eligible to obtain coverage through the exchange. Employer-sponsored coverage may affect an employee's ability to meet the criteria for the subsidy. If there are many employees qualify for federal assistance, it will be reasonable to let them use those plans, particularly since employees being offered insurance by an employer aren't allowed onto the marketplace if their employer is offering insurance deemed affordable, or 9.5 percent of their wage rate based on 130 hours per month for single coverage. "A lot of folks qualify for these things, and there's no penalty to employers," Tambe said. Know the paperwor

A 27-year-old in Jackson pays $336 a month for the second-cheapest silver health plan on Mississippi's s federally run insurance marketplace. That is more than twice as much as the $154 a 27-year-old in Nashville would pay for the same type of policy, and the $138 for a similar person in Tucson. Across all 34 insurance marketplaces run by the federal government, the average is $287, about 25 percent cheaper. The reason for the higher prices in some markets? Paltry competition, say Leemore Dafny and Christopher Ody from Northwestern University, and Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jackson has only two insurers on the marketplace: Humana and Centene. By contrast, four insurance companies slug it out on Nashville's exchange. In Tucson, there are eight. Jackson's over-the-top premiums underscore one of the least-heralded shortcomings of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act: the scarcity of insurers on health plan exchanges, which is driving up the price of policies across the country. The research by Ms. Dafny, Mr. Gruber and Mr. Ody, to be published by the National Bureau of Economic Research next week, concludes that premiums on the exchanges are 11 percent higher than they would be if all the health insurance companies that sell policies in each state had participated in the new markets for health plans. More competition not only would lower premiums, but would also save the federal government money. It would spend $1.7 billion less in subsidies to low- and middle-income Americans buying policies on the health care insurance exchanges. "Half of the population in the states with health exchanges facilitated by the federal government is served by three insurers or fewer," Ms. Dafny said. "To have competition on the exchanges you need competitors." The findings are somewhat perplexing, though. By law, 80 to 85 percent of premiums must be devoted to medical spending. Insurers don't have particularly large profit margin

On May 17, 2014, The Fiscal Times reported that the government is: "paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the situation." A 7-page slide presentation created by HHS confirms that one-in-four people who have signed up for Obamacare have "data discrepancies." Reports are that some two million people's health care coverage may be at risk. Out of some 8.8 million persons who have signed up for coverage, about 5.5 million are in the federal insurance exchange receiving reduced rates, or benefits, to pay for their health insurance policies. The sliding scale subsidized policies are priced based on income, family size, and geographical location of the individual. Under the law, only citizens and legal immigrants are entitled to subsidized coverage. The presentation shows that the data errors involve information concerning details on income, citizenship and immigration status.