HHS says 700,000 have lost insurance coverage since May
Sacramento Bee
September 19, 2014
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/18/6718791/hhs-says-700000-have-lost-insurance.html
After enrolling more than 8 million people into marketplace health insurance this year, roughly 700,000 have lost their coverage, Medicare administrator Marilyn Tavenner testified Thursday before Congress. Her surprise disclosure came during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in which Republicans blasted Tavenner about a lack of transparency and ongoing data security problems with the HealthCare.gov website. After a disastrous rollout that saw the federal insurance marketplace crash only minutes after its Oct.1 debut, HealthCare.gov underwent a massive repair job by a team of private-sector computer experts from Silicon Valley. By Thanksgiving 2013, the website was functioning properly and more than 8 million people signed up during an extended enrollment period that ended in May. Since then, Tavenner and other officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have been unable to say how many of the new enrollees have lost coverage because of non-payment.
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Health Care Act Still Covers 7.3 Million
The New York Times
September 18, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/us/over-seven-million-still-have-coverage-under-health-act.html?_r=0
The Obama administration said Thursday that 7.3 million people who bought private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act had paid their premiums and were still enrolled. Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, disclosed the latest count at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. President Obama had announced in April that eight million people had signed up for coverage in the federal and state insurance exchanges, also known as marketplaces. The chairman of the committee, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, asked why the reported enrollment had dropped by 700,000 people, or about 9 percent.
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ApolloMed ACO Announces Final Performance Year One Results Which Show $10.98 Million In Total Savings
CNN Money
September 17, 2014
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/LA14856.htm
Apollo Medical Holdings, Inc. (ApolloMed) (OTC-QB: AMEH), an integrated physician-centric healthcare delivery company, today announced that ApolloMed ACO generated $10.98 million in savings of which $5.38 million will be distributed to ApolloMed ACO. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) yesterday issued quality and financial performance results for the Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organizations (MSSP ACOs) and Pioneer ACOs that showed improved patient care and produced over $372 million in total program savings. Furthermore, the ACOs outperformed published benchmarks for quality and patient experience last year and improved significantly on almost all measures of quality and patient experience this year. Nationally, of the 220 MSSP ACOs with 2012 and 2013 start dates, ApolloMed ACO was one of only 49 that both generated enough savings to be eligible for a distribution and also successfully reported on quality metrics, and earned the 25th highest distribution in the United States.
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CDC: White House Is Exaggerating Obamacare Coverage Gains
Forbes
September 17, 2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/09/17/cdc-white-house-is-exaggerating-obamacare-coverage-gains/
Glance at recent Obamacare headlines and you might think the healthcare law has turned out to be a smashing success, its initial glitches and legal foibles forgotten in the face of incontrovertible achievements. The proof is supposedly in the data, and we’re told the latest data is a clear victory for the Affordable Care Act. “Another day, another survey showing that Obamacare is beginning to cure American’s uninsured problem,” led HuffPo’s coverage this week of two surveys showing a drop in the uninsured rate. “CDC: Uninsured rate now the lowest on record,” ran the headline at Vox, followed by the observation that, “This is, in part, a reflection of Obamacare.” The surveys, one from the Centers for Disease Control and the other from the U.S. Census Bureau, do indeed show a declining uninsured rate nationwide. But as with so much of the data on Obamacare, they don’t really tell us much more than that. Considered in the light of other evidence, however, they do help illuminate the shell game surrounding Obamacare, whereby the administration and the media inflate the law’s achievements and hide its growing costs from American taxpayers.
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ACOs Improve Quality, Save Money, CMS Says
Bloomberg BNA
September 16, 2014
http://www.bna.com/acos-improve-quality-b17179894963/
Accountable care organizations created under the Affordable Care Act are meeting their goals of improving patient care while saving Medicare money, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Sept. 16. ACOs in the Pioneer ACO Model and Medicare Shared Savings Program generated more than $372 million in total program savings for Medicare ACOs, the agency said in a fact sheet. ACOs also qualified for shared savings payments of $445 million. ACOs also saved the Medicare Trust Fund $386 million, the agency said. The results come from preliminary quality and financial results from the second year of performance for 23 Pioneer ACOs (which have more experience with coordinating care) and final results from the first year of performance for 220 Shared Savings Program ACOs, the CMS said.
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GAO: Obamacare abortion rules widely ignored
Politico
September 16, 2014
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/gao-report-obamacare-abortion-rules-ignored-110990.html
There are widespread instances of Obamacare insurance plans violating the rigid rules surrounding whether customers can use federal health care subsidies on insurance policies that cover abortion procedures, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation. The report, commissioned by House Republican leadership and obtained by POLITICO on Monday night, found that 15 insurers in a sample of 18 are selling Obamacare plans that do not segregate funds to cover abortion (except in cases of rape, incest or the mother’s life) from their Obamacare subsidies. The Affordable Care Act requires that insurers collect separate payments from customers for abortion coverage so that taxpayer money in the form of subsidies do not cover abortions. Adoption of the complex payment scheme — which essentially requires customers to send two separate payments to their insurers — was pivotal to getting the health law through Congress.
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Federal Health Care Website Faces Security Risks, Watchdog Finds
The Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2014
http://online.wsj.com/articles/federal-health-care-website-faces-security-risks-watchdog-finds-1410895828
HealthCare.gov has continuing security frailties that put users' sensitive personal information at risk, a government watchdog is set to tell Congress this week. Despite the federal government's efforts to protect the website from breaches, "weaknesses remained in the security and privacy protections applied to HealthCare.gov and its supporting systems," said the Government Accountability Office. The agency released a report Tuesday on the security of the site, through which millions of Americans bought coverage under the health law last year and which millions more will be urged to use. "Until these weaknesses are fully addressed, increased and unnecessary risks remain of unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of the information collected and maintained by Healthcare.gov and related systems, and the disruption of service provided by the systems," according to the GAO report, published ahead of testimony to be given at a Thursday hearing of the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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Uninsured Rate Drops To Lowest Level Since The '90s
The Huffington Post
September 16, 2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/obamacare-uninsured-survey_n_5825472.html
The latest numbers come from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which polled more than 27,000 people during the first three months of the year. Forty-one million U.S. residents, or 13.1 percent, were uninsured during the quarter when benefits started to kick in for people who signed up for coverage into private insurance or Medicaid via the Obamacare exchanges or elsewhere. That's the lowest number and percentage of uninsured people since the CDC started using this version of its survey in 1997. It's also down 3.8 million people and 1.3 percentage points from the end of 2013. The Affordable Care Act's impact on the uninsured actually is understated by the CDC survey. More than 30 percent of Obamacare's 8 million private health insurance enrollees signed up in March or later. That means their benefits wouldn't have kicked in by the end of the third quarter, so a portion of them wouldn't have had coverage by the time of the CDC poll.
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115,000 immigrants to lose health coverage by Sept. 30 because of lack of status data
The Washington Post
September 15, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/115000-immigrants-to-lose-health-coverage-by-sept-30-because-of-lack-of-status-data/2014/09/15/f76be8e6-3d18-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html
Federal health officials said Monday that more than 100,000 immigrants who bought health-care plans through the federal insurance exchange will have their coverage cut off at the end of the month, because they failed to provide proof by the Sept. 5 deadline that their citizenship or immigration status makes them eligible for insurance on the marketplace. Those individuals can still send in the needed information to the federal exchange and if they are found eligible, they will be able to regain coverage, officials said. They will be considered under a special category reserved for people who have experienced a major life change, such as having a baby or getting divorced or losing a job with health insurance. Separately, about 363,000 consumers who have coverage could lose financial subsidies for their insurance premiums unless they clear up information about their incomes that differs from that on federal tax records.
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Feds give immigrants more time on health care
USA Today
September 15, 2014
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/15/cms-affordable-care-act-announcement/15679611/
Consumers facing questions about their immigration status or income to qualify for health insurance plans have a few extra weeks to provide more information before losing coverage or subsidies, a Department of Health and Human Services official said Monday. About 115,000 of 966,000 people who bought plans on HealthCare.gov and owed more information about their immigration status have unresolved issues, Andy Slavitt, principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said. These people were given a deadline of Sept. 5 to submit information — they now have until Sept. 30 to provide proof of their citizenship, or they will lose coverage. After that date, those people can reapply if they can prove citizenship even though the open enrollment period is closed. The other 851,000 people either have had their cases resolved, or the cases are in the process of being resolved. Slavitt would not comment on how the resolved cases were decided.
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115,000 to lose health insurance on missed Obamacare deadline
Chicago Tribune
September 15, 2014
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-obamacare-deadline-20140915-story.html
Aout 115,000 people, including 4,000 in Illinois, will lose their health insurance at the end of the month because they missed a deadline to prove they are legally in the United States, federal officials said Monday. Despite making up to a dozen attempts, the federal government was unable to verify the citizenship or immigration status of those people, who had until Sept. 5 to send additional documents to confirm they were eligible to buy health insurance coverage on HealthCare.gov, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported. The government now will inform insurance companies to cancel their coverage effective Sept. 30. The cancellations affect only those who enrolled on HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act that was used by consumers in 36 states, including Illinois, to compare and purchase health insurance. Andrew Slavitt, the No. 2 official at the federal agency, said those who lose coverage may be able to re-enroll for a plan through a special enrollment period if they're able to submit documentation that confirms their eligibility.
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Community health clinics receive $3.4 million in federal grants
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
September 15, 2014
http://www.jsonline.com/business/community-health-clinics-receive-34-million-in-federal-grants-b99350513z1-275138851.html
Fourteen community health centers in Wisconsin, including the four in Milwaukee, have been given federal grants totaling $3.4 million to hire additional staff and expand services. The grants are from money allocated as part of the Affordable Care Act and will enable the health centers to provide care to an estimated 19,000 new patients. The four community health centers in Milwaukee will receive a total of $1 million in grants. "Today's awards will be used to expand access to care to Wisconsinites that need it most," Mary Wakefield, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, said in a statement. Nationally, $295 million in grants were awarded to 1,195 heath centers. Community health centers and their clinics are located primarily in low-income urban neighborhoods and rural areas. The centers provide care primarily to people covered by Medicaid programs, such as BadgerCare Plus, and people without health insurance, who typically pay a fee tied to their income. The four community health centers in Milwaukee provide primary care, dental care and other services to roughly one in seven of the city's residents. Statewide, community health centers provide services to 284,000 people a year.
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Auditor Finds a Sixteen-Year Delay in Rural Clinic Rules
Roll Call
September 15, 2014
http://blogs.rollcall.com/healthopolis/auditor-finds-a-sixteen-year-delay-in-rural-clinic-rules/?dcz=
Major congressional health care legislation is often chock-full of various requirements for reports and program changes. Federal agencies are often hard pressed not only to keep track of congressional mandates but also to take timely action on them. Sometimes, federal agencies never get around to implementing new regulations based upon the congressional instructions. The Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General last week reviewed inaction by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on changes mandated by Congress in 1996 that changed the terms of a certification requirement for rural health clinics. The health clinics, located in areas where there is a shortage of health care providers, receive enhanced Medicare and Medicaid payments. Congress rolled-back the previously unlimited certification of providers and called for the termination of providers that no longer are located in rural areas.
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Fewer uninsured, CDC finds
Politico
September 15, 2014
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/obamacare-coverage-110994.html
White House officials on Tuesday welcomed the first federal data confirming that Obamacare was bringing down the number of uninsured Americans, and they said the gains are even larger than these initial reports show. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report “dramatically understates the actual gains in insurance coverage so far in 2014,” Jeanne Lambrew, deputy assistant to the president for health policy, and Matt Fiedler, senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a blog post about the new survey data. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released its first-quarter health insurance survey early Tuesday, finding that the percentage of uninsured adults under 65 dipped to 18.4 percent from 20.4 percent in 2013.
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