Tag: Health Care Reform

Uncategorized by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer

Hyper-Technical Health Reforms Threatening American Family’s Health Care Quality

Like most American families with school aged children, our family’s annual flurry of back-to-school preparations includes an annual visit to our child’s pediatrician. Since we generally must take time off work to fit in the pediatrician’s visit around the flurry of work, carpool and other demands of daily living, like most families blessed with relatively healthy children, we tend to remember to schedule the visit when prompted by a minor health concern and/or to save up our requests for prescription refills and questions and concerns about minor or chronic health care issues to discuss with the pediatrician while he conducts his annual check of our sons’ height, weight, blood sugar, eyesight, immunizations and other basic health concerns normally included in an annual well child checkup. Unfortunately, the opportunity for parents to use a single office visit to the pediatrician for a single fee to get caught up with our pediatrician on all current and recurring health care questions and concerns about our child while the pediatrician also conducts an annual checkup appears to be the latest healthcare casualty of Obamacare.

Uncategorized by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer

OIG Says CMS Mismanaged HealthCare.gov ACA Federal Marketplace Implementation

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and other public and private organizations should use key lessons for the successful design and deployment of website and other operating systems revealed in a report of the findings of the Department of Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into what lead to the notoriously poor launch and other problems in the Healthcare.gov health insurance marketplace website and operating system that the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (ACA) directed HHS to establish and administer to facilitate the purchase of private insurance by citizens living in states that declined to establish a state health insurance marketplace in response to ACA.

According to just released OIG Report OEI-06-14-00350, “many missteps” committed by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and its Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) lead to the widespread crashes of the Healthcare.gov website and other widespread problems with the Healthcare.gov enrollment tools necessary for millions of Americans to enroll in new health insurance coverage options created as part of the ACA. The report not only helps to explain what went wrong, but also provides key insights for HHS as well as other public and private organizations of common management issues that often derail the design and deployment of website or other technologies required to execute key organizational goals.

health care by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer

Calculating & Reporting Your ACA Individual Shared Responsibility Payment

Beginning January 1, 2014, the individual coverage mandate rules of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (ACA) generally required most American citizens to maintain health coverage meeting the “minimum essential coverage” mandates of ACA or pay an “individual shared responsibility payment.” With the deadline for filing 2014 individual tax returns rapidly approaching, Americans now generally will be required to show their fulfillment of or exemption from this mandate or pay the “individual shared responsibility” payment that ACA imposes as a penalty for failing to meet its individual coverage mandates when filing their 2014 individual tax returns

Uncategorized by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer

Mass. Connector & Other State Exchanges Problems Another Sign of Cracks In Obama Care?

While most Americans are familiar with the well-publicized issues and higher than projected premium costs of coverage offered to Americans enrolling in health care coverage through the federal healthcare marketplace Healthcare.gov created under the health care reforms of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (ACA), many Americans are just beginning to recognize the growing problems and concerns emerging with state exchanges in those states that elected to enact their own exchange. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in the challenge to the use of ACA subsidies to pay for coverage purchased through the federal healthcare.gov marketplace in King v. Burwell on Wednesday, March 4, 2015, the growing evidence of rapidly emerging funding and other challenges affecting state run exchanges raise concerns about the solvency and reliability of coverage promised and purchased through those state run exchanges. What are your thoughts?