Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

CMS ramps up suspensions of health insurance agents registered with HealthCare.gov

CMS finally clamping down on agents plan switching, assigning existing enrollees to themselves. CMS requires agents seeking to act on an existing account with a different Agent of Record or with no AOR to: – either conduct a three-way call with the client and the marketplace center. The client authorizes the new agent to act […]

Healthcare Costs Expected to Surge at Highest Rate in 15 Years

Forecast of commercial healthcare costs to come in 2025 (MedCity report), what has occurred in the past, and what is expected beyond 2025. Meanwhile Congress is twiddling their thumbs arguing amongst themselves over what is more important to their existence . . . constituents or big business. Interesting too, how the Sadlers are getting themselves […]

 FLiRT Covid wave is growing less rapidly

r.j. sigmund on Covid a few days ago i read an article on a university website that Covid activity was ‘showing signs of slowing’, so that’s what i expected to find when i checked the data this morning…”growing less rapidly” might have been a more descriptive assessment… among the CDC’s “early indicators“, “test positivity”, or the percentage of tests for Covid that were positive, […]

Challenges of Poverty

The Chronic Challenges of Poverty – Public Health Post Having empty pockets can impact long-term health. Poverty has been linked to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, among other chronic conditions. The symptoms of chronic diseases are caused by inflammation, part of the body’s immune response. Obesity, stress, autoimmune disorders, and other chronic diseases involve a constant state of […]

Collection of Articles Accumulated Over the Last Few Days

GOP’s attack on Americans’ retirement savings just went to the next disgusting level, Opinion, Alternet. “To protect older Americans’ life savings, President Biden pledged in October to crack down on financial advisers who recommend investments just because they pay higher commissions. Then the insurance industry got to work.” Explained: The Controversy Over Tim Walz’s Military Service, […]

Income Uncertainty and ACA marketplace Application

by Andrew Sprung xpostfactoid Brian Blase, a conservative healthcare scholar at the Paragon Institute, is out with an analysis of 2024 ACA marketplace enrollment (summarized in this WSJ op-ed) claiming that millions of enrollees have mis-estimated their incomes to claim benefits to which they are “not entitled.” Here are the core claims: In nine states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, […]

An Upcoming White House Decision May Jeopardize Americans’ Access to Life-Saving Drugs

I have been picking up more healthcare commentary which depicts the difficulty in providing healthcare at a sustainable cost. This brief commentary depicts one of the problematic issues for people. I believe this sentence makes the issue very clear. Copay accumulators are programs health plans use to prevent copay assistance from counting toward patients’ deductibles […]

Biden Administration Proposes Rule To Ban Medical Debt From Credit Reporting 2

by Sheela Ranganathan, Maanasa Kona Health Affairs There is a growing interest among policymakers to protect patients from medical debt and its negative downstream effects, in April 2023. Three of the three credit reporting agencies (CRAs)—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion voluntarily agreed to stop reporting any medical debt under $500. In April of this year the Consumer […]

Large Percentage of Rural Hospitals Are at Risk of Closure

What if you had an accident and the closest Emergency Room was over 30 minutes away or what if you were sick and there were no physicians or hospital beds in your community? Millions of Americans are facing this situation because rural hospitals are being forced to close. Why More Than 30% of Rural Hospitals […]