The CMS has a growing health insurance exchange problem.
The authors of the 2010 federal healthcare overhaul never intended the federal government to operate most health insurance exchanges. But as the nation gears up for an expected 7 million new beneficiaries to make use of exchanges — about 85% of whom will require complex subsidies — 26 states have left their operations to the federal government.
And it’s beginning to look like the number of states hankering for a federal takeover could grow. A number of state-led exchanges are way behind schedule.
Are the feds up to the task, given that running something for more than half the country is a lot more complex than launching any one state exchange? Experts say local insurance market variations will stop the federal exchange builders from using cookie cutter economies of scale.
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Healthcare providers still weary from the most recent drawn-out budget battle in Washington could have the next fiscal fight on their hands sooner than they think.
Experts have warned that it's the next round of deficit-reduction negotiations that the healthcare industry should be worried about, and it could hit providers in a couple of ways. Federal lawmakers must tackle the sequester, the automatic spending cuts that Congress postponed for two months in last week's fiscal-cliff legislation. (Medicare providers would not have seen their cuts kick in until early February, according to the Congressional Budget Office).
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Moments after gunman Adam Lanza's mass murder of 26 people—including 20 children—at Sandy Hook Elementary last week, President Barack Obama called on the nation's leaders to set politics aside and take “meaningful action” to prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Conn.
In less than a week's time, those efforts are taking shape in Washington as some lawmakers have made a connection between the nation's recent spate of shooting sprees and the need for stronger mental healthcare services—and adequate federal funding for those services—in America.
Two days after the massacre, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) appeared on “Fox News Sunday” calling for a federal commission on mass violence. “It's like the slogan we use in Homeland Security: 'See something; say something,'” Lieberman said. “If you see a younger person that really looks like they are really troublesome, get them mental health help,” he continued. “Is there enough mental health help available for these kids?”
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One of the casualties from last week's congressional elections is a familiar face in the healthcare industry: Rep. Pete Stark, the California Democrat who currently serves as the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee's ranking member and is widely known for the three-part physician self-referral law that bears his name.
A longtime champion of a single-payer healthcare system, Stark—who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 8th, 9th and currently 13th district of California since 1973—was beaten by Eric Swalwell, a fellow Democrat, to represent the Golden State's 15th district. In the healthcare industry, Stark's influence largely stems from his work drafting legislation that governs physician self-referral in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The first phase prohibited physician self-referral for clinical lab services in Medicare starting in 1992, and additional phases became effective in 1994 and 2007, as the law eventually expanded to other healthcare services and also applied to Medicaid.
From 2007 to 2010, Stark served as the subcommittee's chairman. His departure now leaves open the health subcommittee ranking-member spot on the hugely influential panel that makes tax law.
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Cue the ominous legislation soundtrack.
Congressional Democrats welcomed Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan back to Capitol Hill through a day-long series of attacks on his plan to repeal the healthcare overhaul and add an insurance subsidy option to Medicare.
Like other Democrats, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) took to the Senate floor to blast the Romney-Ryan campaign's healthcare plans that echo many of the provisions included in budgets Ryan authored as chairman of the Budget Committee.
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Do you catch more advocacy groups with honey than vinegar?
One House Republican is trying to win over a key supporter of the federal healthcare law.
The AARP's support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was seen as a politically critical step in mollifying seniors' concerns about the legislation. Since the law's enactment, the group's support has served as a continuing bulwark against Republican charges that the law will undermine Medicare. And as Medicare has risen to prominence in the presidential campaign with the Republican vice presidential nomination of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the advocacy group for older Americans has again moved to political fore.
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Congressional Democrats—and one independent—are lending their support to a new HHS pilot study that will review the current policy prohibiting gay and bisexual men from donating blood.
Two years ago this month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) sent a letter to HHS about this issue and have led an effort to overturn a policy—imposed in the 1980s in response to the AIDS epidemic—that bans any male who has had sex with another man since 1977 from giving blood. The lawmakers contend that technological advances in blood testing, as well as opposition from the blood bank community, are reasons to rethink this policy.
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