Robert Laszewski

So far California has received $910 million in federal grants to launch its new health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").

Last week's deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" settled very little. For those in the healthcare market, I will suggest the big takeaway is that we should expect very little will be settled in the coming months and we will continue to face a great deal of uncertainty for years to come.

Not surprisingly, only about 10% of firms with fewer than 200 workers take advantage of self-insurance -- and almost no very small groups (fewer than 50 workers) use the product.

They both are and they both aren’t. I’ve never seen a week in healthcare policy like last week. The media reports have to be in the thousands, all trying to make sense of the furious debate between Obama and Romney over Medicare.

Republican Vice Presidential pick Paul Ryan isn’t the only one Democrats are piling on this week. The knives have come out for Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 3.4 million people in the individual market will receive $426 million in consumer rebates because of the Affordable Care Act's new MLR rules.

Medicare Advantage would appear to be a fantastic success—senior premiums are dropping and enrollment is increasing.

Insurance exchanges have to be up and running in all of the states by October 2013 in order to be able to cover people by January 1, 2014. If the states don't do it, the feds have to be ready with a fallback exchange.

In a recent speech at the Hoover Institution, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) argued again that his proposal to reform Medicare, and now his tax credit proposal for replacing the Democratic health care law for those under-age 65, would guarantee to citizens “options like the ones members of Congress enjoy.”

It’s back to work in Washington, DC and all the attention is now on the Super Committee and their goal of cutting spending by at least $1.2 trillion over ten years.