Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation

Health Republic Insurance Company of Oregon, a Lake Oswego-based insurer that is phasing down its operations, on Wednesday filed a $5 billion class action lawsuit on behalf of insurers it says were shorted by the federal government under an Obamacare program. The lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims, focuses on a program that was intended to offset insurer losses in the early years of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

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Minnesota’s state exchange, MNsure, has faced billing problems and low enrollment numbers. After the King decision, Representative Matt Dean (R), calls MNsure an “unnecessary problem.” It was recently announced that a software problem with MNsure forced 180,000 Minnesotans to have their MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance renewals delayed.... the state has received software that cannot update basic life changes such as marriage or birth of a child.

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The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through ObamaCare, putting significant taxpayer funding "at risk," according to a new audit report. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts.

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Nearly two in three Americans who bought subsidized health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges this year had to pay some of the federal dollars back, according to new data from H&R Block... Policymakers have expressed concern that low-income people could struggle with paying back the subsidies — or suffer if their tax refunds are greatly reduced because of overpayments. The average amount consumers owed back to the government was $729, cutting their potential tax refunds by almost one-third, said the tax preparation company.

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A group of Democratic senators is urging the Obama administration to delay a key portion of Obamacare because the results could be “harmful and disruptive.” In a letter exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, Senate Democrats pleaded with Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell to delay an Obamacare rule change that puts companies with 51 to 100 employees in the costlier “small group” market instead of the “large group” market.

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More than 2,000 more Coloradans had their health insurance plans cancelled as a result of the Affordable Care Act, according to a letter from the state regulatory agency to state Senate Republicans... In March, the commission reported 1,755 cancellations and in June another 2,320. Last week’s total was 2,105. In all, nearly 340,000 Coloradans received cancellation notices, although not all are because they don’t conform to the ACA; some carriers are leaving the individual insurance market altogether.

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Nearly 400,000 people in Massachusetts will need to reapply for health insurance before the end of the year, and many of them probably do not even know it. They are people who do not have employer-sponsored health insurance and who instead sought insurance through the state. After the Massachusetts insurance website failed last year, most of them were enrolled in temporary coverage that ends Dec. 31, which is why they must select a new plan.

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A devastating new Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General report released on Tuesday reveals that the Obama administration has yet to determine whether 1,295,571 of the over 8 million Obamacare enrollees are U.S. citizens lawfully in the country. The finding, located on page 11 of the report, states that 44% of the remaining 2,611,780 application "inconsistencies" are related to verifying "Citizenship/national status/lawful presence." Another 960,492 application inconsistencies were related to verifying whether subsidy applicants provided accurate income information.

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A government document provided to The Associated Press says more than 2 million people who got health insurance under President Barack Obama’s law have data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for some. Two million people works out to about one out of four who signed up, creating a huge paperwork headache for the feds, and exposing some consumers to repayment demands if they got too generous a subsidy — or even loss of coverage.

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Obamacare technical problems are keeping at least 84,000 Michigan residents from receiving Medicaid benefits. The Michigan Medicaid program is still not receiving full data files for residents that applied to Medicaid through HealthCare.gov, and as a result, the state hasn’t been able to process any Medicaid applications yet, almost six months after the federal website’s launch.

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The portals were meant to curb rising health care costs for small businesses by increasing competition among insurers. The White House has said they are intended to allow employers to purchase insurance with the same ease as buying a flight on Web sites like Expedia or Priceline — but in most states, it has not panned out that way yet.

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There's another quirk in the Obama administration's new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes. With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on. Right now the HealthCare.gov website can't handle such updates.

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The agency that runs California’s health insurance exchange is scrambling to correct a technical problem that left blank spaces in eligibility notices mailed to nearly 114,000 households, leading to consumer confusion just days ahead of the application deadline.

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The Obama administration has told Vista volunteers and other AmeriCorps workers that their government-provided health coverage does not measure up to the standards of the new health care law, and that they may be subject to financial penalties unless they obtain insurance elsewhere... Vista members may be required to pay a tax penalty if they do not have other coverage and do not receive an exemption. The impact on community service workers is another unanticipated consequence of the health care law...

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Monday, December 23rd, is the official deadline for individuals to apply for coverage through the exchanges, to ensure they have insurance by January 1st. Unfortunately for those trying to get coverage, the ObamaCare website is crashing today. Three months of "fixes" and a "tech surge" have failed to address the fundamental software problems in the exchanges.

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"If you haven't heard from us by Dec. 23, it is unlikely your application will be processed for Jan. 1 insurance coverage," the pre-recorded call from Cover Oregonsays. "If you want to be sure you have insurance coverage starting Jan. 1, you have other options." These options include going directly to an insurance agent or broker, but this route makes the applicant ineligible for tax credits and subsidies. Without these credits, many people will not be able to afford the new health insurance premiums.

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Because of a quirk in the Affordable Care Act's drafting, the Northern Mariana Islands and the four other American territories are subject to some parts of the law but not others. This has messed up the individual market in the Northern Mariana Islands so badly that the one plan selling policies there told the territory's top insurance commissioner it would not sell new plans for 2014.

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More than 2,400 Connecticut customers who bought health plans on Access Health CT were given incorrect information about their insurance plans, in one case underestimating the maximum out-of-pocket by at least $4,000. The website for Access Health CT, the state's new health exchange, had incorrect information online about deductibles and co-insurance impacting all 19 individual health plans from the three insurance companies that offer those plans through the exchange...

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Members of Congress who have gone along with the idea that they should get insurance through Obamacare’s system of exchanges are getting a stronger dose of medicine than they bargained for.... “Those who have managed to navigate the site and successfully sign up are finding an enrollment page that shows they are enrolled in multiple plans or not enrolled at all. The people at DC Health Link have had a difficult time answering our questions and confirming we are enrolled in a plan,” Beardslee said.

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After refusing for weeks to detail the extent of back-end problems with healthcare.gov, the Obama administration on Friday said a technical bug affected approximately 25 percent enrollments on the federal exchanges in October. Those technical bugs, separate from the troubles consumers had experienced accessing information on the website during the first two months, are posing a significant new problem for those who signed up and are expecting insurance coverage come Jan. 1.

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Up to one-third of the 149,000 individuals who have been able to sign up for Obamacare — 44,700 people — may not have health insurance after all come Jan. 1, even though HealthCare.gov accepted their applications and confirmed coverage. In yet another acknowledged blunder, administration officials have admitted that people “might not be officially signed up with their selected issuer, even if the website has told them they are,” ABC News reports.

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Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment. Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete, so they had to track down additional data — a laborious task that will not be feasible if data is missing for tens of thousands of consumers. In still other cases, insurers said, they have not been told how much of a customer’s premium will be subsidized by the government, so they do not know how much to charge the policyholder.

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About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month... The fumbled rollout forced the administration to scale back its original enrollment targets of about 800,000 for the first two months.

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The Obama administration today announced a year-long delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal-run exchanges, another setback for HealthCare.gov. The delay, first reported by POLITICO, comes just weeks after Obama administration officials said the online enrollment for small businesses would be ready by the end of November.

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Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could find their coverage canceled because they are not compliant with ObamaCare, several experts predicted. Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason. Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute said that in addition to the individual cancellations, "at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well." There are approximately 157 million employer health care policy holders.

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More than a month after the launch of its Obamacare exchange, Cover Oregon has yet to enroll anyone into a government-approved health plan, despite receiving $59 million from the federal government to assist with implementation of the law.

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North Carolina’s largest insurer is having its share of problems with the Obamacare website. Internal emails obtained by WNCN-TV show that Blue Cross Blue Shield show that only 1,000 people had filled out applications as of October 15th. In fact, only one person was able to successfully use Healthcare.gov to enroll in the new exchange. But even that single person has not paid, which means the enrollment is not complete.

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There are nearly 250,000 Coloradans whose health care policies have been or will be cancelled as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the state’s Dept. of Insurance announced on Wednesday. Many of the policies are being cancelled because of stipulations under the new law that force insurers to cover certain things that weren’t covered under the old policies; other plans are being cancelled by insurers because they’re no longer cost-effective.

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Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday announced they have information indicating the administration—a month before the website’s launch—ordered contractors building the insurance portal to change the system so that unregistered shoppers can’t see price comparisons.

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The president of the United States would add, "Once you get on the phone with a trained representative, it usually takes about 25 minutes for an individual to apply for coverage, about 45 minutes for a family. Once you apply for coverage, you will be contacted by email or postal mail about your coverage status." But ABC News found a man who has spent 4.5 hours on the Obamacare hotline -- and he still hasn't been able to sign up for Obamacare.

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The White House and insurance companies are creating “alpha teams” that will work to address the corrupted enrollment data that is being produced by the ObamaCare website.... In one instance reported by The Wall Street Journal, one enrollee’s two dependents were categorized as spouses — leaving the impression of a polygamist family... The problems with the ObamaCare site have prompted many insurers to manually check every new application that comes in.

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An Iowa City man may have the distinction as the Hawkeye State’s first Obamacare enrollee, but it didn’t come easy. Edward Voss, a computer programmer, told the Des Moines Register he had to try more than 100 times before he was ultimately able to sign into HealthCare.gov.

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The cost of the Affordable Care Act website has tripled in two years to $292 million, NBC News reported Friday. The website -- Healthcare.gov -- has crashed repeatedly since it went online Oct. 1, with the Obama administration saying it has had 17 million unique hits.

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In nearly two weeks, the federal ObamaCare exchange did not produce a single enrollment in a health insurance plan in Alaska, according to state officials overseeing the program, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is demanding answers from the Obama Administration.

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OCT 16 2013: Delaware has finally signed up someone for Obamacare. This has caused officials in that state to celebrate, according to the Associated Press. "Delaware officials are celebrating the state's first health insurance exchange enrollee," the AP writes. "Department of Health and Social Service officials have declared 59-year-old Janice Baker of Selbyville the first confirmed resident to enroll in the marketplace. It opened Oct. 1 as part of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act.

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The federal health-care exchange that opened a dozen days ago is marred by snags beyond the widely publicized computer gridlock that has thwarted Americans trying to buy a health plan. Even when consumers have been able to sign up, insurers sometimes can’t tell who their new customers are because of a separate set of computer defects... According to several insurance industry officials, the reports are sometimes confusing and duplicative. In some cases, they show — correctly or not — that the same person enrolled and canceled several times on a single day.

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A local Iowa affiliate reports that it could confirm only 5 people in that state have signed up for Obamacare... The "system doesn't seem to be working for most who log-on," says the local reporter. "We tried multiple times on Wednesday to see how long it would take to set up an account to try to shop the rates from the plans. Each time we logged in, within 5 minutes, the system was down." "Also today, the insurance division office in Des Moines told us, 'We cannot say for sure if anyone has successfully signed up through the healthcare.gov website," says a reporter. "Tonight, one of the two exchange providers ... said a total of 5 Iowans have obtained insurance."

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Hawaii’s health insurance marketplace is hoping to turn around a stalled start by providing plans and pricing to consumers by Oct. 15 — but there are no guarantees, its executive director said Wednesday... The insurance exchange — a key component of President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul — hasn’t been able to sell any insurance in Hawaii because of problems with the software at the heart of the marketplace. Consumers can’t see plans, even though a variety of options from two insurers have been approved to be sold by the state’s insurance division.

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A mistake in the drafting of ObamaCare leaves families at risk of paying thousands of dollars more for their health insurance than was heretofore expected... Kosali Simon, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University, said, "We saw this two-and-a-half years ago and thought, 'Has anyone else noticed this?' Everyone said, 'No, no. You must be wrong.' But we weren't, and that's going to leave a lot of people out."

Government, Incompetence, Financial, Oops, Waste

The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today. The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law.

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A so-called "family glitch" in the 2010 health care law threatens to cost some families thousands of dollars in health insurance costs and leave up to 500,000 children without coverage, insurance and health care analysts say... "The family glitch is definitely a drafting error that Congress made that needs to be fixed," said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. "But that seems unlikely."
 

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The Rochester-based grocer that has been continually lauded for providing health insurance to its part-time workers will no longer offer that benefit. Until recently, the company voluntarily offered health insurance to employees who worked 20 hours per week or more. Companies are required by law to offer health insurance only to full-time employees who work 30 hours or more per week. Several Wegmans employees confirmed part-time health benefits had been cut and said the company said the decision was related to changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act.

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The nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., is leaving California's individual health insurance market, the second major company to exit in advance of major changes under the Affordable Care Act. UnitedHealth said it had notified state regulators that it would leave the state's individual market at year-end and force about 8,000 customers to find new coverage. Last month, Aetna Inc., the nation's third-largest health insurer, made a similar move affecting about 50,000 existing policyholders.

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A new Gallup poll finds that 43% of uninsured Americans remain unaware that under Obamacare they must obtain health insurance or face fines and penalties. Under Obamacare, uninsured Americans will face a phased in penalty structure. In 2014, the fine will be $95 per person and will climb to $695 in 2016 for people who earn between $9,500 to $37,000 a year. From there, says Henry Blodget of Business Insider, the fines increase...