HHS

Healthcare Executives: The Federal Government Needs Your Help…Again

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Now that the health insurance exchanges are open for business, the issue has become enrollment and how to encourage and assist people in signing up for an insurance plan. To provide this kind of muscle, the federal government is turning to community and rural hospitals for assistance, John Commins at HealthLeaders Media reports, and on […]

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Response: HHS Skewing Report to Paint Rosy Picture about HIEs

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Yesterday, we wrote about the report from HHS that highlighted the benefits of the new health insurance exchanges and how consumers will be facing lower premiums under healthcare reform. It was a rather optimistic picture in a debate that has been fraught with many dire predictions of economic and Constitutional disaster because of the Affordable […]

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Report: HHS Expects Premiums under HIEs to be Lower than Expected

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The HHS report released today contains some positive indicators for health insurance exchanges and their impact on premiums among the 36 states where the federal government is involved, Harris Meyer at Modern Healthcare reports. At first glance, it seems “that premiums will be significantly lower than expected in 2014.” Furthermore, consumers will be able to […]

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Trend: Primary Care Physicians are Accepting More Medicare Patients than Before

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Here’s one of those trends for which the long-term implication can be difficult to decipher. According to Kelly Kennedy in USA Today, physicians are actually accepting more Medicare patients now than in previous years. This, in spite of the fact that 9,500 physicians opted out of Medicare in 2012 compared to 3,700 in 2009, a […]

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Individual Mandate Rules Lack Teeth, Will Hurt Hospitals Further

Healthcare reform’s individual mandate has left many pundits and politicians foaming and frothing at the mouth with rage. According to Philip Betbeze at HealthLeaders Media, this foaming and frothing may have been a waste of energy, because the set of proposed rules as issued from the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services […]

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HHS Gives Catholic Hospitals Exemption on Contraception Coverage

A major hot-button issue of the 2012 election cycle was whether or not religious-affiliated institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, would have to provide insurance coverage for contraception to its employees. The Obama administration had already revised its original requirement once, and according to Donovan Slack and Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico, it’s “backtracking” for a second […]

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HHS Re-Brands “Exchanges” as “Marketplaces”

Yesterday’s inaugural festivities were equal parts breathtaking and distracting. In moments of celebration and national unity, it’s easy to forget that President Obama’s second term brings with it numerous challenges that will be difficult for the entire nation to navigate. One of these challenges is healthcare reform, and apparently (but not unexpectedly), the administration is […]

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What Constitutes a Frontier and Remote (FAR) Area?

The day of reckoning for rural healthcare is almost here, and framing it as a “day of reckoning” is only a mild exaggeration. According to John Commins over at HealthLeaders Media, rural healthcare providers have yet another issue that requires their immediate engagement–the federal definition of what a rural and frontier area is. The Department […]

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