Showing posts with label healthcare.gov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthcare.gov. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Taxpayers subsidizing 76% of premium under health care law Associated Press

Healthcare.gov  If you missed signing up, here are some other alternatives

People who signed up for coverage under President Obama's health care law are paying about $80 a month in premiums on average, the administration reported Wednesday.


The new numbers from the Health and Human Services Department cover only the 36 states where the federal government took the lead in setting up new insurance markets, accounting for about 5.4 million of the 8 million people who signed up nationally.


-- Taxpayers are subsidizing 76 percent of the average monthly premium in the 36 federally administered markets.
-- The average premium is $346 a month, but the typical enrollee pays just $82. Tax credits averaging $264 a month cover the difference. The government pays the subsidy directly to insurers.
-- After tax credits, Mississippians paid the least for coverage - averaging just $23 a month on average premiums of $438. Among people in the 36 states, New Jersey residents paid the most - an average of $148 on premiums averaging $465 a month.
-- For this year, the average consumer could pick from five insurance companies and 47 different plans, although choice was more limited in a small number of states. From a range of platinum, gold, silver and bronze plans, most people picked silver.
-- There was a link between greater competition and lower premiums. For each additional insurer in a local market, premiums for the benchmark silver plan declined by 4 percent.
-- Premiums varied widely between states, ranging from an average of $536 in Wyoming to $243 in Utah.
Federal officials say they don't yet have complete data on the 14 states running their own markets.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Death Spiral ? Is this the 'Black Hole for the Affordable Care Act

A better title for this may be "Failure to Launch"



Our congress has launched a multi-stage rocket. Whether it will obtain a free standing orbit is open to question.
Stage I success is very much in doubt. The velocity may be inadequate to launch stage II and even if Stage II lights off the orbital insertion velocity will be insufficient to obtain an orbit.

The lack of success in the enrollment process due to the failures of healthcare.gov and other related items in enrollment of young people may be a fatal even in financing the entire initiative for the Affordable Care Act.

This enrollment was meant to offset the expanded coverage for older patients, and increased enrollment of previously uninsured due to income limitations, and patients with pre-existing conditions.

Those in the know are already talking about a 'bailout' for insurers amounting to billions of dollars.  Again, 'it's too big to fail".

Nancy Pelosi was correct, "We won't know what is in it until it is passed"  This is a hell of a way to run 1/6th of our economy.

Prominenrt voices are being raised in the credible media about these real risks. Even dome Democrats have lowered their flag, although there remain some demagoguery and social engineers who are attempting to hi-jack our freedoms and bankrupt our already insolvent government.

Let's face it, our government lies, not only about health care, and politics, but national security issues.

Keep and open mind, but verify what we are being told by our government.


Saturday, January 4, 2014

Ideologues and Unrealistic Expectations

Comments from Gary Levin MD are underlined and italicized:

Today I am amazed at an enthusiastic article about the Affordable Care Act by Eugene Robinson from Tallahassee.com.

His unbridled enthusiasm in the face of many difficulties that have nothing to do with health care exemplifies those who designed this law and passed it without reading it.

Here are some of his unsubtantiated claims and perhaps 'wishful thinking'

Eugene Robinson:  Washington Post


"Now that the fight over Obamacare is history, perhaps everyone can finally focus on making the program work the way it was designed. Or, preferably, better.
The fight is history, you realize. Done. Finito. Yesterday’s news.
Any existential threat to the Affordable Care Act ended with the popping of champagne corks as the new year arrived. That was when an estimated 6 million uninsured Americans received coverage through expanded Medicaid eligibility or the federal and state health insurance exchanges. Obamacare is now a fait accompli; nobody is going to take this coverage away."
1. The fight is not history, we are barely through round one and all the points go to the opponents of the ACA.
2. Six million Americans have not received coverage from the ACA. Registering is only the first step. It took me over ten hours of fumbling on the web site, and on hold via telephone. How many will be able to pay premiums by deadlines, or negotiate the difficult process of acquiring a provider. 
"There may be more huffing, puffing and symbolic attempts at repeal by Republicans in Congress. There may be continued resistance and sabotage by Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures. But the whole context has changed."
The upside of the ACA is that all previously uninsurable patients now are enrolled no matter what pre-existing condition they have A+++++.
Can the ACA be improved?  Most definitely. The argument should not be Republican against Democrat.  Political party does not immunize one against illness.
I wholly agree with Mr. Robinson's analysis regarding the eventual goal of a uniform health system.  To call it universal care is a misnomer.
"The real problem with the ACA, and let’s be honest, is that it doesn’t go far enough. The decision to work within the existing framework of private, for-profit insurance companies meant building a tremendously complicated new system that still doesn’t quite get the job done: Even if all the states were fully participating, only about 30 million of the 48 million uninsured would be covered.
Yes Obamacare does not go far enough, however that is not the principle flaw. There is no one principle flaw, if there are any that is the poor analysis  and proposed implementation of a major expenditure that will effect most businesses,  all patients, and our national budget, and come up short.  If we are intent, committed and dedicated to these goals then let's get it right (or mostly right the first time)
Obamacare does establish the principle that health care is a right, not a privilege — and that this is true not just for children, the elderly and the poor but for all Americans.
Throughout the nation’s history, it has taken long, hard work to win universal recognition of what we consider our basic rights
This is a political and philosophical statement, not about health care. We need to keep these issues separate.  I agree with him about the tenet that all people should have health care financing.
Our first step should be to put on hold further mandates while the act is re-evaluated. Repeal is not an option, however amendment is a reality and not an 'existential' argument.
Mr Robinson's  article is not objective, nor unbiased. He totally neglects the weaknesses of the law which will require amendments.  Placing the issue in terms of a 'battle' between political parties does disservice to dedicated professionals who have  been in the system,  and who were neglected during the planning process.
To ignored the flaws would be a fatal mistake, health care costs will soar and there will still be large gaps in the insured population
Contact Eugene Robinson ateugenerobinson@washpost.com.
Contact Gary Levin MD at gmlevinmd@digitalhealthspace.com



Friday, January 3, 2014

Looking Back at 2013

This report is somewhat late due to last minute projects at the end of 2013 and the confusion about the individual mandate, the botched launching of health benefit exchanges and some other unexpected tasks

We reviewed the 'best"  Health Train Express posts of 2013 as measured by the number of comments and our analytics.













There were many more 'favorites".  The highest number of page views was in the category of the Affordable Care Act. This was to be expected, given the high ranking of the ACA for search engines.

Visit the sites on Health Train Express for many more interesting topics. Health Train Express has archived our posts dating back to 2005.  The focus of posts has changed over the  years, and reveals the dynamism of health care and reform.






Friday, December 20, 2013

ObamaCare: We Did Not Know What was In It Until It Passed

It did pass, and we still don't know what  is in it.  Each day we learn of waivers, modifications, amendments to 'fix' fatal flaws in the law.  This is the simple part.....getting people to sign on for health coverage....the doorway to health and wellness.

Dates have been set, mandates have been put on hold, insurance policies were cancelled, no wait..Obama says "Kings X", I take that back. Sebelius smiles and goes before congress, non-plussed.  She must be close to retirement so no problem and undoubtedly she will be through with her public service.  I wonder if she has health coverage?

Many of us have tried to take the high road and plan health reform logically analyzing each step as we proceed.  This is almost a futile endeavour, because the landscape is constantly changing.




Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius testifies at a Congressional panel last week. The White House has outlined a new exemption under the Affordable Care Act






n a last-minute policy change, the Obama administration waived the so-called individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act for people whose individual health insurance policy is being canceled.
The act requires most Americans to have qualified health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a tax penalty, unless they meet one of myriad exemptions. One is if qualifying coverage would cost more than 8 percent of household income (the affordability exemption). Another is they can prove a hardship such as homelessness, bankruptcy, domestic violence, large medical debts, utility shutoff notice or death in the family.
Under new guidance issued late Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that having an individual insurance policy canceled now qualifies for the hardship exemption.
The process is not really that simple:
People who qualify for the cancellation hardship exemption have two options:
-- Don't buy coverage and don't pay a fine.
-- Buy a bare-bones catastrophic policy on an exchange. These catastrophic policies do not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, but people who buy them won't owe a fine. Before Thursday's rule change, to buy this policy a person had to be younger than 30 or meet the affordability exemption.
To qualify for the new policy-cancellation exemption, consumers must complete a hardship application, which will let them purchase a catastrophic plan or receive a penalty waiver, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (For the application, see http://1.usa.gov/19YrBnK.)
To purchase the catastrophic policy, they must submit the form, and evidence of a canceled policy, to a company selling such policies in their area.
The announcement came just days before the Monday deadline for enrolling in coverage to start Jan. 1, and insurance companies are not happy.
When Obama announced another policy reversal in November - saying insurance companies could temporarily renew certain policies that were to be canceled because they did not comply with the act - he gave states the option of allowing that or not.
Covered California did not. As a result, most individual health policies in California that are not grandfathered will be canceled Dec. 31.
Some customers of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California will be able to keep their non compliant policies until the end of February or March, respectively, under a settlement with the state insurance commissioner.
People with individual plans that are grandfathered, meaning they had them before the act was signed in March 2010, may keep them until the insurance company decides to cancel them.
It appears that nothing is guaranteed as to the roll out. Insurers, providers, hospitals are all nervously watching and waiting. 


Thursday, December 19, 2013

The United States of Affordable Care (Act)


Health Care Financing would seem to be a long way off from the patient waiting to see their physician.

In today's world the quantitiy and qualitiy of care depends very much upon the type of health insurance the patient has to use.   The care may be far different according to region, or state.

The term 'public health ' is a misnomer. The public health system is not accessible to all people for a number of reasons.  Many perceive public health as inferior to the 'private system of health care", and only would access a center if there were no other option. Many current users of public health and/or Federally Qualified Health Centers would not even know how to access ' private care'. Learn more about them here and here and  here.  I particularly like the last one. No one home --

The resource cannot be found.

If you are successful, the rules are as long as the Affordable Care Act.

A new term which may be unfamiliar to most providers and/or patients is the "Federally Qualified Health  Centers".  These centers are found more commonly in areas of low economic assets and amongst many people who fall in the range of the Federal Poverly Level (FPL).  And here are the numbers which are both unrealistic at the lower end and even more unbelievable at the top end.

  • $11,490 to $45,960 for individuals
  • $15,510 to $62,040 for a family of 2
  • $19,530 to $78,120 for a family of 3
  • $23,550 to $94,200 for a family of 4
  • $27,570 to $110,280 for a family of 5
  • $31,590 to $126,360 for a family of 6
  • $35,610 to $142,440 for a family of 7
  • $39,630 to $158,520 for a family of 8
We seem to be an impoverished nation in the world of developed countries.

Many of these centers predominantly serve 'medicaid' beneficiaries. They also serve ( unintentionally) to isolate medicaid and those who are receivng public assistance from the main stream of health care.  Hospitals and providers also treat these patients differently, not so much in terms of the quality of care they receive....rather the accessibility.  Many budgetary decisions by states often effect Medicaid patients first, because large portions of state budgets are allocated to Medicaid.

There is a non-admitted  'caste' system when it comes to medical care.  It largely is secondary to income and location, and in cities there is often a sharp divide between those living in upper middle class neighborhoods and lower class neighborhoods.

The situation is also becoming worse, and there is no sign the Affordable  Care Act will diminish the divide.
Although the ACA specifies preventive medical care  (for free)  Despite being "free", there will be a cost. There are 14 general categories,   22 special categories for women, and 25 categories for children.

A disturbing distinction between public health and private health financing is also more evident with the introduction of health information technology. In order to qualify for Grants for Information systems and operational financing a non-profit status is a requirement, which immediately rules out most entrepenurial systems (ie, private fee for service office and/or clinics, as well as some hospitals.




Monday, December 16, 2013

Health Reform: A Play in Multiple Acts

It is a very exciting and troubling time  for health care in the United States.  The stage is set for multiple acts occurring simultaneously.

For those who have boots on the ground with financial commitments and assets the changing landscape means unknown profits (if any) or losses.  Health institutions and providers charged with improved outcomes and 'less cost' are facing the conundrum of supplying more care with less money.

Leonard Zwelling M.D., a Houston physician who was a congressional staffer during the writing of the affordable care act puts it this way, as he discusses a statement made by


Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the leading experts on the workings of Congress, summed it up in one sentence during a briefing for the press and politicos in November 2008. He said:

"Every one's idea of health care reform is the same: I pay less."

Where I was trying to get my head around a solution to the three tenets of my idea of health care reform, everyone around me was trying to preserve or increase his piece of the health care payoff pie. I was looking for a legislative solution to assist the country in arriving at the place where the rest of the civilized world was - the provision of some form of universal health care as a right of citizenship. Everyone else was looking to cut a deal that preserved his place at the trough of health care profiteering. Guess who won?


With the full cooperation of the Congress and the White House, health care was not even remotely reformed. The Affordable Care Act is not about health care reform. It is about money, particularly preserving the insurance industry's hold over how health care dollars are spent.

Hospitals and providers had little to do with the Affordable Care Act.

"The Affordable Care Act continued to allow hospitals to jack up prices with no relation to actual costs. Only the doctors gave up something because, unlike the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry, medicine did not speak with one voice when lobbying on Capitol Hill and thus could largely be ignored. This is health care reform? I don't think so.
The reason the Affordable Care Act did what it did is because that's what it aimed to do - increase access to insurance for the uninsured, get everyone else to pay for it, and make sure no one currently in the health care business loses a dollar from the amounts they are already extracting from patients and doctors alike.
Complicating Ornstein's comments are the multiple scenes ongoing in the 'reform' efforts
Technological advancements such as

Health information technology which includes electronic health records, health information exchanges, the proposed upgrading of the ICD - 9 to ICD -10, the advances in mobile health, telemedicine and more.......



The increased regulatory arm with meaningful use in 3 steps.  MU is linked with financial  incentives from CMS to offset the expense of providers and hospital acquisition of electronic medical records.

The challenging role of an unproven health benefit exchange system, with an incomplete back end disconnecting the actual payment to insurers.





The details of connecting the dots are only now coming into focus for bureaucrats and congress who badly underestimated the complexity of health care delivery.  The turmoil is clearly more evident among providers, hospitals and the patients who are the "guinea pigs"

During the next 12 to 24 months the 'symphony" will unfold.  Will it be harmonious or an unfinished symphony?








Sunday, December 15, 2013

Freedom of Information Act Request filed by Health Train Express

Doctors Complain They Will Be Paid Less by Exchange Plans.  Many will opt out of private plans. News reports indicate that 70% of California MDs will not participate in the Health Exchange and the Private plans Some have complained to medical associations, including those in New York, California, Connecticut, Texas and Georgia, saying the discounted rates could lead to a two-tiered system in which fewer doctors participate, potentially making it harder for consumers to get the care they need.




Insurance officials acknowledge they have reduced rates in some plans, saying they are under enormous pressure to keep premiums affordable. They say physicians will make up for the lower pay by seeing more patients, since the plans tend to have smaller networks of doctors.

If you’re a physician and you’ve negotiated a rate from insurance, shouldn’t it be the same on or off the exchange?” said Matthew Katz, executive vice president of the Connecticut State Medical Society. “You’re providing the same service.”

The benchmark for physician fees is the rate the federal government sets for services provided to older Americans through Medicare. In many markets, commercial plans may pay slightly above the Medicare rates, while doctors say that many of the new exchange plans are offering rates below that.

Physicians are uncomfortable discussing their rates because of antitrust laws, and insurers say the information is proprietary. But information cobbled together from interviews suggests that if the Medicare pays $90 for an office visit of a complex nature, and a commercial plan pays $100 or more, some exchange plans are offering $60 to $70. Doctors say the insurers have not always clearly spelled out the proposed rate reductions.

Health Train Express has filed a FOIA request from CMS (Freedom of Information Act which will require full disclosure to the providers and public  (ie, transparency that Obama claims to encourage)  Watch for the published link in about one month



Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Poll: Americans better understand, still don’t love, health-care reform

Lake forming behind an Ice Dam



The recent melt-down of the Affordable Care Act's opening of the Health.gov website served to cast a spotlight on the entire law.  More than 60% of the public pretend to know what it is about. That is about the same as Congress knew when they voted to enact the bill into law.

Despite and perhaps because of it's sudden visibility and the topic of all news media most know of it's shortcomings and how it was passed with major deceptions on the part of the Democrats, HHS, and President Obama's administration.

According to the Seattle Times, "A poll released today by Harris Interactive dug more deeply into the opinions of the uninsured, who face penalties if they don’t get insurance by March of next year. The survey found that more than one-third of uninsured Americans say they are prepared to make health-insurance choices — but 31 percent said they didn’t know about the health insurance exchanges set up to sell the coverage.
On top of that, 61 percent of the uninsured say they have done “nothing” in the past year to get ready for the Affordable Care Act. More than half say they don’t know what they’re going to do about the requirement that they get insurance."

As you may recall, it’s been rough going since the Oct. 1 launch of online insurance markets created to enroll people in individual insurance plans. The federal site, which serves 36 states, essentially wasn’t working for weeks and only really kicked into gear over the last week or soWashington state’s site had some hiccups, then got itself sorted out, but in the past few days has been down again for software fixes.
Added to those technical glitches like a bee sting on a raging sunburn was the outcry by folks who learned their individual and family insurance plans were being canceled at the end of the year. People felt betrayed by President Obama’s promise that if you liked your health care plan, you could keep it.
A survey conducted and released last week by Gallup found that only 37 percent of Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act or would like to see it expanded while 52 percent want it revised or repealed (the rest are undecided).
The crazy thing — given all of the recent attention to the problems with the roll out of the health-insurance exchanges — is that public opinion hasn’t changed a whole bunch from the same Gallup survey nearly three years ago. In January 2011, 37 percent of those surveyed approved of the ACA while 57 percent did not.
So it begs the question: How and Why was the ACA passed into law?
Many think this was a major move toward consolidating control of healthcare costs, and giving government a major role in 1/6th of the American Economy. It effectively destroys a major freedom of choice of what Americans buy in a market place.
How could public opinion remain so constant despite the tumult in recent news? It could come down to politics.
The Seattle Times teamed up with the Elway Poll in September to take the ACA pulse of Washington residents. It turned out that public opinion on health-care reform largely hewed with political leanings.
In that survey, 80 percent of Democrats approved of the Affordable Care Act, while 80 percent of Republicans did not.
This may reflect more upon the discordance between Democrats and Republicans overall, including budget difficulties which are also severe given the expanding national debt.  Republicans are vehement about corraling the national debit, which will again take canter stage in March 2014.