Mary Mosquera
Even with their own health improvement strategies in place, some states, such as Vermont and Minnesota, are already harnessing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish health insurance exchanges and to drive healthcare delivery and payment reforms to the extent that their legislatures enable them.
With Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney frequently reasserting his plans to sign an Executive Order to grant all 50 states waivers that essentially serve as get-out-of-health-insurance-exchange-free cards, if he's elected, the future of HIX appears troubled.
The fragmented delivery of care and the number of providers involved in a patient's episode of care erects barriers to be able to effectively coordinate care, said the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission during a meeting last Friday.
On the third and final day of the healthcare law hearings at the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, the major question the battling attorneys took up was whether Congress would have enacted the health reform law without the part that may be found to be unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court dove into the heart of the health reform law and its most controversial aspect, the individual mandate, during day two of hearings on the law.
The Supreme Court justices listened to arguments Monday about whether or not they have jurisdiction in the lawsuit brought by 26 states led by Florida against the federal government over the constitutionality of the health reform law.
The ruling promises to produce historic change and uncertainty in how healthcare will be delivered and paid for in the future.
President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois, and the same state that elected a Democratic governor in 2010 who promised to raise taxes to fix the budget, sent a moderate message to the Republican Party with a strong win by Mitt Romney in the March 20 GOP primary.
The Supreme Court will likely uphold the health reform law or put it off until after the elections by upholding the Anti-Injunction Act, which is one of the foundations of the lawsuit, according to many industry experts.
CMS released its final rule Friday on Medicaid eligibility. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act widens eligibility for Medicaid to adults with incomes 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or $14,856 for an individual and $30,656 for a family of four.