News
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans to re-bid the city workers' health insurance contract has come to a halt for now, after a state court agreed with municipal union concerns and put the request for proposals on temporary hold.
In the states with largest uninsured populations, the stakes are high for this fall's insurance exchange enrollment -- the difference between the healthcare status-quo and improvements in healthcare access and sustainability.
As health systems and hospitals consolidate and battle for patients, they are starting to employ online consumer marketing efforts. A new Provider Web Presence Index is now available to track provider success.
A new healthcare environment where value is more important that volume requires a business model that incentivizes all providers on the care-delivery continuum to delivery higher value care.
The Department of Health and Human Services is promising consumers a simple enrollment process, but the federal marketplace website, along with a number of state exchanges, were glitchy or non-functioning during the morning of Oct. 1, as software kinks were exposed and servers were strained.
The federal government has shut down, but the health insurance exchanges opened for business as planned Tuesday, although with traffic tie-ups, despite Republican lawmakers' efforts to block a major component of the health reform law from taking effect.
Many of the 50 individuals who showed up for a community forum to find out about the Maryland Health Connection on a September evening in suburban Washington appeared to share a need for what the health insurance exchange could offer them.
As Congress has failed to pass legislation to continue funding the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services has furloughed more than half of its employees. Medicare and Medicaid funding will survive, at least in the short term.
Much public discussion about the Affordable Care Act has focused on the health insurance exchanges. But a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to support the exchanges, including the creation of thousands of new jobs.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is getting ready for the first year of its multi-state health plans, offering consumers another, perhaps little-known option in state and federal exchanges.