(Reuters) – Technical glitches still plague the display of new healthcare plans to be offered to millions of uninsured Americans starting in 26 days, including how medical charges and deductibles are listed, industry officials say.
Health insurers planning to sell policies to people who are currently uninsured, under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, say they expect the problems will be remedied by October 1, when consumers will be able to buy health insurance from state exchanges. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency, said it was on schedule to sign final agreements with insurers between September 9 and September 11, allowing them to sell specific policies on the exchanges.
“Our timeline remains the same,” said CMS in a statement, “and we are working to ensure that any issues are resolved before open enrollment.”
Although the signing of agreements with insurers is a mere two days behind the original schedule, it led to speculation that there were serious technical snags. Late last week a conference call between the government’s information technology contractors and insurance industry representatives revealed some of those problems, which centered on how information about health plans, such as charges for medical claims and deductibles, was displayed on a “preview” website, according to people with knowledge of the call.
An official from Florida Blue, a large insurer, was concerned that a health policy it plans to sell on the state’s exchange would mislead customers: The preview website showed no charge at all for some medical services, rather than no charge after a deductible is met.
An Aetna staffer was frustrated that policies the company once intended to sell in Ohio, but withdrew, were still showing up in the preview site. Delta Dental of Wyoming reported that its plan was showing zero deductible in policies that cover parents plus children.
“That will be misleading if it pops up as a zero deductible and will put us on the hook if they go to the dentist” and expect not to pay a deductible, a Delta Dental staffer said on the call, according to a participant. “We’re concerned about that.”
The insurance exchanges, the heart of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will allow residents of each state to seek subsidized health coverage. The government aims to sign up 7 million people in the first year. That number is expected to grow to 22 million in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Carriers were sanguine the snafus would get addressed.
“We knew there would be IT issues going in,” said Kerry Hall, chief executive of Delta Dental of Wyoming, in an interview. “We made a business decision to be in the exchange for the people of Wyoming, and we’ve very optimistic that CMS will get this resolved.”
Aetna spokesman Matt Wiggin said his company was also confident the problems would be fixed.
IT experts said the problems should be familiar to anyone who has had to deal with an elaborate tech rollout at work, including the sometimes unsatisfying interaction with a dedicated “help desk.”
“It’s classic,” said Rick Howard of technology consultant Gartner, which is not an exchange contractor. “When you have these large IT projects, it comes down to not having enough time to prioritize issues based on severity. If you go live with this knowing you have glitches, consumers may make decisions based on false information.”
ONLINE ONSLAUGHT
For months it has been clear that IT would be both the backbone and the Achilles heel of the Obamacare exchanges. Although people will be able to buy health coverage by phone and through paper applications, most are expected to do so online. Almost everyone will seek information for policies at the website being created for their state’s exchange.
As a result, if any issue could delay the start of the six-month open-enrollment period next month, experts have said, tech glitches would be it. A report last month by the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warned that HHS was months behind the schedule it originally set in testing IT security.
The problems in displaying insurance information affect exchanges being built by the federal government in 34 states. Only some states were discussed on the IT conference call.
Another 16 states and the District of Columbia are responsible for their own exchanges. Among those, Oregon has said it would limit access to its exchange to residents working with an insurance broker or a state-trained “navigator” during the first few weeks of October to iron out any technical bugs. California is considering a similar approach.
Administration officials last week would not specify what IT or other issues caused HHS to push back the deadline for final approval of policies. But the IT call last Friday underlined the frustration of some carriers as they race to prepare for the launch.
Some insurance company representatives said they had asked repeatedly for errors to be corrected and still have numerous outstanding requests with the exchange help desk, according to people with knowledge of the discussion. Others said incorrect rates for certain services were on display.
After some two hours of such complaints, a federal IT representative on the call said: “I hear your frustration, and we’re doing all we can.”
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Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
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Information provided by: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-idUSBRE98405E20130905
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Tony Scurich, Principal/Broker [email protected]
Born in Watsonville Tony has been in the insurance business since 1981 and with Scurich Insurance since 1983. Tony is married with 3 children, graduated from Watsonville High in 1977 and Santa Clara University in 1981. Current activities include running at Rio Del Mar Beach & West Cliff Drive, biking, cooking/BBQing, reading biographies and eating breakfast burritos at Pixie Deli. Past and present community activities include board member of St Francis High School, Pajaro Valley Historical Association, YMCA (board member and youth basketball coach), Boy Scouts of America and, Pajaro Valley Chamber of Commerce (board chair in 2004).
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
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Average medical payments for California workers compensation claims increased sharply between 2005 and 2011, although medical cost containment has shifted some medical payment expenditures, the California Workers’ Compensation Institute said Monday.
Oakland, Calif.-based CWCI analyzed data from 1.9 million California workers comp claims between January 2002 and September 2012. Average medical payments for indemnity claims rose to $6,845 in 2011, up 60.2% from $4,273 in 2005, CWCI said.
Meanwhile, average medical payments for all California workers comp claims climbed to $2,543 in 2011, up 51.7% from $1,677 in 2005.
Average payments for indemnity claims that included pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment between 2005 and 2011 rose 187.6% to $801, the report said. Average pharmaceutical and durable medical equipment payments for all California workers comp claims during that time increased 171.3% to $276.
The report showed that medical treatment represented 73% of medical payment costs in 2011, compared with 79.4% in 2005. However, medical cost containment expenses represented 13.9% of medical payment costs in 2011, compared with 11.6% in 2005.
CWCI said early analysis of 2012 claims showed that average medical payments for workers comp claims showed “marginal” declines in the first three and six months after an occupational injury.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Information provided by: http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20130827/NEWS08/130829850?tags=|305|304|92
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Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
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The 2013 Farm Bill presents a real opportunity for substantive changes in U.S. agricultural policy. But instead of reform, both the House and Senate agricultural committees are offering classic bait-and-switch proposals to protect farm subsidies – more than 80 percent of which flow to households much wealthier than the average American family.
As I discuss in my new study for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the bills’ bait is the elimination of the politically toxic Direct Payments program, introduced in 1996, which annually sends about $5 billion in welfare checks to people who own or farm cropland – whether or not they grow any crops. The switch is the introduction of new programs that would give farmers even larger subsidies if either crop prices or average per-acre crop revenues decline from their current record or near-record levels.
In the House farm bill, price supports, through a new Price Loss Coverage program, are the preferred subsidy vehicle. The PLC would establish target prices close to the current near-record market prices for crops like corn, wheat, rice, peanuts and oilseeds. Farmers would then receive payments when market prices fall below those target levels.
Peanut and rice farmers stand to benefit especially from the PLC. The bill’s proposed peanut target price, for example, exceeds any of the Congressional Budget Office market price forecasts for the next five years. While the PLC may indeed benefit Southern-state farm industries, it appears to have little semblance to the “save the family farm” safety net program claimed by its advocates.
The Senate’s farm bill would put taxpayers on the hook for a new program that triggers subsidies when a farmer’s revenues for major crops fall below 88 percent of their recent five-year average. And both the House and Senate farm bills would require taxpayers to cover 70 percent of the costs of a new insurance program to give farms additional “double dip” subsidies if their revenues fall below 90 percent of expected levels.
CBO estimates the new farm subsidy programs will cost about $3.5 billion a year. In fact, several independent studies have shown that if crop prices drop, even quite modestly, American taxpayers will be shelling out far more for these new programs than the $5 billion in claimed savings for the elimination of the Direct Payments program. If crop prices shift towards longer-run historical levels, taxpayers could face an estimated $16 to $20 billion in new farm subsidy costs. That’s a lot of money, and most of it would go to the wealthiest farmers, corporations and landowners in the farm sector.
Most impartial observers would likely conclude there is no valid financial case for federal farm subsidies and special farm safety nets. Farm debt-to-asset ratios are at record lows, prices for major crops are at or close to record highs, and family farms almost never fail (annually, only one in every 200 farms closes its doors because of financial problems). In fact, farming is one of the most profitable and financially secure sectors of the economy.
Both the House and Senate farm bills ignore real reforms, and instead attempt to fool taxpayers with bait-and-switch proposals for new subsidies. Those new programs will give most of their subsidies to America’s most successful and wealthiest farmers and landowners.
And while reforms are necessary, it is more than ironic that the same House Farm Bill schedules substantial cuts to nutrition programs targeted to relatively poor families while continuing, and even increasing, six-figure government handouts to thousands of millionaire corn, peanut, wheat, soybean and rice farmers.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Information provided by: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/06/17/congress-appears-unlikely-to-cut-subsidies-for-wealthiest-farmers
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When the Obama administration said it would delay the health reform law’s requirement that employers insure their workers or face a fine, its critics began to wonder what else might get delayed. The law’s big new piece of infrastructure—the online insurance marketplaces scheduled to go live Oct. 1—involves coordinating a massive trove of information technology and a ton of personnel training. So the doubters, reveling in the recent bad news, have begun casting doubt on the whole enterprise.
Not so fast. The employer mandate was one of many ancillary provisions—not critical to Obamacare’s central mission—that the administration has jettisoned in its race to build the exchanges in time. But signing people up for new insurance plans and giving them tax credits to do so is the main idea. It will take a major calamity for the administration to delay this crucial piece of the law. The exchanges may not work smoothly in the early months, but the administration will hit the deadline, says Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a consultancy helping states build their exchanges. “Worst-case scenario: October 1, all exchanges open up.”
Administration officials are repeating earlier promises of an on-time launch. “The marketplaces will be ready,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Thursday in a typical statement. “We are on schedule with the testing that began in October 2012. Any discussion to the contrary is pure speculation.” And while administration officials didn’t hint at problems with the employer system until the surprise delay, the marketplaces are different. The core goal of the Affordable Care Act is to bring health insurance to those who don’t have it, and the law’s long-term success will be judged on how many new people get covered. That’s a reality with both practical and political consequences, and the people setting it up know that. “There will be a Web portal, and there will be call centers, and they will enroll people in products and put them on tax credits,” says Cindy Gillespie, senior managing director at McKenna Long & Aldridge. “That’s going to happen. How smoothly the eligibility process works? Who knows. But it will be made to work.”
Building the exchanges has proven a heavy lift. To make them work, the federal government needs not only a consumer-facing website and call centers stocked with customer-service representatives in 34 states but also a brand-new, complex IT structure to make the system work across the country. The law says that when an applicant enters her information online, various federal agencies must validate her income, citizenship status, residency, and eligibility for Medicaid. The portal must also connect to the Veterans Administration, the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. Plus, it needs to communicate with every health plan selling insurance in each state.
It’s still unclear just how ready these digital systems will be on Day One and how much is already being done to mitigate the inevitable glitches. The administration has remained tight-lipped about the operational details. That has frustrated states and insurers, both of which need to connect to the new under-construction system. “From where I sit, it’s hard to monitor their progress on the data hub, because it is a black box until it either works or doesn’t work,” says Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health and a former official at the Office of Management and Budget.
Indeed, a Government Accountability Office report last month said that while HHS had been hitting internal IT milestones, the volume of work to be completed was too large for GAO to assess the likelihood that systems would work in time. “Whether … contingency planning will assure the timely and smooth implementation of the exchanges by October 2013 cannot yet be determined,” according to the report. States and health plans have begun testing some data exchange with the federal hub. But states have been testing “clean” data, meaning that every name is spelled perfectly and every Social Security number is entered correctly. Ultimately, the data hub will need to identify people and their information even with typos and errors.
Still, while the public deadline is Oct. 1, HHS and its contractors will realistically have a little extra time to fix IT problems. The insurance plans won’t go live until January, leaving a cushion if parts of the system have to default to paper, or if delays arise in processing applications. Cheryl Smith, a senior practitioner at Deloitte, worked on the Utah small-business health exchange, which launched in 2009. Before the open-enrollment deadline, “I had holes in my stomach,” she says. “We got to that day and I realized, this is not really the launch.” As long as the website goes live in October and people have new insurance plans in January, the administration will have kept its key promises.
In the meantime, administration officials and their allies are working to get the word out about the new systems. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters this week she would be in a new city nearly every week this summer explaining the exchanges. Television ads are running, and smaller, targeted outreach efforts have launched. That’s a big job, too, because most people without insurance don’t know what Obamacare offers them. The better these outreach efforts work, the greater the imperative to launch on time.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Information provided by: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/obamacare-delay-what-obamacare-delay-20130711
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