If your health insurance policy was cancelled in anticipation of the start of the Affordable Care Act, you may soon be able to have it reinstated.
Today, the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) said that after careful review, Michigan is allowing health insurers to reinstate cancelled policies.
Continue reading Michigan to Allow Health Insurers to Reinstate Canceled Plans
The Washington Post reports a critical function of the federal government’s new health insurance marketplace for small businesses has been pushed back for a second time. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that employers will not be able to enroll in plans through the SHOP until the end of November. Under the first delay, small employers were slated to begin enrolling their employees in health insurance plans on Friday, November 1st.
Continue reading Another Major Delay in Obamacare: Setback for Small Business Health Exchange (SHOP)
The ACA stands poised to usher in sweeping changes for many entities. Leaders need answers on how the ACA is going to impact their operations. Multiple regulations and shifting timetables, however, make it difficult to measure – and almost impossible to predict – what those changes can mean for you.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has brought sweeping changes throughout our country since its inception, affecting individuals and businesses alike with countless mandates, and imposing penalties and taxes for noncompliance. In 2014, individuals must secure health care coverage or face taxation. The counterpart to this provision requires employers that employ at least 50 full-time employees (including full-time equivalent employees) (Applicable Large Employers)[i] to offer affordable coverage to their full-time employees or, as with the individual mandate, face a penalty.[ii] Although the employer shared responsibility mandate, found in section 4980H and its related proposed regulations (Pay or Play Mandate), has been delayed until 2015, Applicable Large Employers should waste no time and take this opportunity to carefully strategize their approach toward compliance, including (1) analyzing their employee population, (2) ensuring that coverage is affordable and provides minimum value, and (3) contemplating how and when to calculate full-time employee status, either on a monthly basis or by using the safe harbor look-back provisions (found in the proposed regulations) in which they need to set measurement periods and subsequent stability periods, and decide whether to use administrative periods.[iii] Additionally, many employers must substantially revise their eligibility criteria, amend plan documents, and update policies, procedures, handbooks and other materials to reflect the new standard for full-time eligibility and, if applicable, continuation of coverage during a subsequent stability period. With these mountainous tasks loaded upon employers, one simple question may be forgotten: “Who are my employees?”
Continue reading Pay or Play Mandate: The Forgotten Employees
Through the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Act”), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (“Institute”) was created to promote research to advance the quality of evidence-based medicine. The Institute is funded through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund, which is financed, in part, by fees paid by plan sponsors of applicable self-insured health plans and issuers of specified health insurance policies. For the first year of applicability, the fee is $1 per covered life and increases for later years.
The first deadline for payment of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) fee is this July 31, 2013.
Continue reading Employers Be Wary of Upcoming Health Plan Fees
Client Alert: As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (i.e., Health Care Reform), the annual election period that ran from November 15 to December 31st of each year is now changed and runs from October 15 to December 7th of each year.
Continue reading Medicare Part D New Annual Election Period & Revised Model Disclosure Notices