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The Obama administration plans to push back by a month the second-year start of enrollment in its health program to give insurers more time to adjust to growing pains in the U.S. law, a move that may stave off higher premiums before the 2014 congressional elections.

Oregon, a state that fully embraced the Affordable Care Act, is enduring one of the rockiest rollouts of President Barack Obama's signature health care law, with an inoperative online exchange that has yet to enroll a single subscriber, requiring thousands to apply on paper instead.

The administration was warned last spring that its website didn't meet key requirements for a successful rollout, including relying too heavily on outside contractors, according to a copy of a Red Team report.

Seeking to defuse a growing political furor as millions of Americans receive cancellation notices from health insurers, the Obama administration will not require insurance companies to upgrade existing individual plans to meet the requirements of the federal healthcare law for 2014.

Supporters and opponents of the federal health law still can't decide whether to call it the woodwork or welcome mat effect - the millions of people currently eligible for Medicaid who are not enrolled and who are expected to sign up as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

With millions of consumers getting cancellation notices for their current health plans, President Obama announced Thursday that he will encourage insurance companies to continue offering their customers the same health plans next year.

In states refusing to expand Medicaid programs, many low-income individuals are likely to face even more difficulties in receiving care as a subsidy that assisted safety net hospitals is reduced under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The agency tasked with implementing the president's healthcare law said Thursday it had uncovered new stresses further downstream in the system that revealed the need for a fresh look at the back-end capacity needs of the online healthcare portal.

Bowing to intense criticism, President Barack Obama apologized to Americans who are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep and pledged to find fixes that might allow people to keep their coverage.

Millions of people could qualify for federal subsidies that will pay the entire monthly cost of some health care plans being offered in the online marketplaces set up under President Obama's health care law, a surprising figure that has not garnered much attention, in part because the zero-premium plans come with serious trade-offs.

A recent analysis shows that people are electing to enroll in Medicaid instead of buying private health insurance on the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges. It's projected that if this trend continues, there will not be enough healthy young people buying health insurance to make the system work.

After focusing for weeks on the technical failures of President Obama's health insurance website, Republicans on Tuesday broadened their criticism of the health care law, pointing to Americans whose health plans have been terminated because they do not meet the law's new coverage requirements.