Tag:

UnitedHealth Group Inc. should have stayed out of Obamacare’s new individual markets longer, the chief executive officer of the biggest U.S. health insurer said…after announcing last month that it will take hundreds of millions of dollars in losses related to the business…While the company’s other lines of business are growing, instead of expanding into Obamacare next year, the company should have kept waiting, UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said…“It was for us a bad decision,”…“I take accountability for sitting out the exchange market in year one so we could in theory observe, learn and see how the market experience would develop. This was a prudent going-in position. In retrospect, we should have stayed out longer.”…UnitedHealth is not alone in its Obamacare struggles. Other insurers, including competitors Anthem Inc. and Aetna Inc., have also either suffered losses in the markets or said they haven’t seen the margins they expected.

For municipal-bond buyers, the boost from Obamacare is waning…municipal bonds have rallied, delivering 16 percent returns in the past two years as the providers were stuck with fewer unpaid bills…“The effect of the Affordable Care Act is fading,”… “We don’t really have any new states adopting Medicaid so you don’t have that expansion.”…The federal law has provided health-care coverage to 17.6 million Americans as a majority of states expanded access to the Medicaid program for the poor and others bought subsidized insurance. The factors that have driven that growth are now weakening…while rising premiums may cause some consumers to go without or lose their policies for not paying their bills…About 9.9 million people were paying for coverage purchased on the exchanges created by the law as of June 30, a decline of 300,000 from March 31…Department of Health & Human Services estimates that about 9.1 million people will be enrolled by the end of the year…“It’s very safe to bet that a lot of hospitals across the country are not going to see as many people getting insurance as they had expected,” The law…has been a boon to investors who hold tax-exempt bonds sold by hospitals: The securities have delivered outsized returns since then, beating a dozen other revenue-bond sectors, including toll roads, airports and utilities…The bonds’ prices have slipped 0.4 percent over the past month amid speculation that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates as soon as December.

While policymakers, and the country, struggle over challenges facing and created by the Affordable Care Act, real healthcare reform is happening almost completely outside of that loop, driven by technology and innovators, many of whom are from outside the healthcare industry…Health IT or Digital Health-the generic terms used to describe these disruptions that include the use of mobile devices and telemedicine, among other changes-are breaking almost every standard healthcare paradigm. It's that "creative destruction" that economists frequently refer to, transforming how care is delivered, received, tracked, paid for and even understood…And unlike traditional healthcare, where the more money you have the more healthcare your get, the health IT revolution largely ignores those barriers. That's because the poor have mobile devices in almost similar numbers to the rich.

Bond issuance by nonprofit hospitals has reached $18 billion to date for 2015, returning to the highest level since 2012. Bloomberg's Kate Smith looks into the role played by the Affordable Care Act in the resurgence of hospital bond offerings...

Executives with Arizona's nonprofit health insurance co-op said Tuesday that they have failed to come up with additional financial backing and the insurer plans to shut down all operations Dec. 31…The announcement by Meritus Health Partners means 59,000 Arizonans it now covers need to find a new insurer by Dec. 15…The decision comes nearly a month after the state Department of Insurance suspended its right to sell new policies or renew current ones and placed it under formal supervision… The nonprofit was one of 23 co-ops created under the Affordable Care Act to provide competition to for-profit insurers, but many have struggled and more than half have now failed or will close by the end of the year.

A local pharmacy owner says the Affordable Care Act is putting him out of business. After nearly 20 years in operation, Mike's Pharmacy in Carson City will close its doors for good on Wednesday, November 11, 2015…Mike's Pharmacy opened in Carson City in 1997 and has been a community institution ever since…"It is very hard to lose this business because of circumstances I had no control of," said Mike Hautekeet, owner of Mike’s Pharmacy…He says the trouble started with the implementation of Obamacare. It wasn't the employer obligation; his employees already had insurance. Instead Hautekeet says Obamacare changed the way pharmacies are reimbursed by insurance companies…"If my cost is too high, and they reimburse me not enough, a lot of times we lose money to fill the prescription," said Hautekeet.

Senate passed legislation…intended to protect small and midsize businesses from increases in health insurance premiums…The bill,…eliminates a provision of the law that would have imposed tough, potentially costly new requirements on businesses with 51 to 100 employees…"This bill will make a helpful adjustment to the Affordable Care Act for small and midsize businesses by limiting potential premium increases and letting states determine what’s best for their market,"…

UnitedHealth, the biggest health insurer in the United States, is considering quitting offering coverage under Obamacare, just one month after discussing expanding coverage in 11 new markets. Bloomberg's Drew Armstrong examines the move and how it may impact the insurance industry and the future of the Affordable Care Act. He speaks on "Bloomberg Markets."

Humana said it will discontinue several products offered on government-run exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, impacting about 100,000 individuals currently covered by the insurer’s plans across the country…The move, disclosed this morning in the company’s third-quarter earnings report, comes due to higher-than expected medical costs from sick newly insured patients covered under the health law…“Operating results for the company’s individual commercial medical business continue to be challenged primarily due to the volatility related to the start of the healthcare exchange program created under the Affordable Care Act as well as the morbidity of membership served under this relatively new program,”…The plans Humana will discontinue had “product designs which attracted a higher-utilizing member base than was assumed when the 2015 plan offerings were priced,” the company said but didn’t specify the kind of plans that will be pulled. “The transitory nature of the population served has also contributed to use of emergency room services and non-participating providers above priced-for levels.”

Nevada Health CO-OP is struggling to the end…Nevada Division of Insurance…filed a petition in Clark County District Court to place the CO-OP into a conservation-rehabilitation receivership. If the court grants the petition, the division would take control of the CO-OP's assets, distribution of funds and administration… CO-OP was created by the federal Affordable Care Act...It borrowed $65.9 million from the federal government to get off the ground…It has not made profits to pay back the loans: The CO-OP reported a $19.3 million operating loss in 2014, and losses of $22.7 million from January through June…It's the fourth of 23 Obamacare CO-OPs to fail nationwide.