Aug 30 2013
The regulations are designed to safeguard how federal funds will be used in online insurance marketplaces and to provide protections to consumers. News outlets also detail a number of health law implementation issues, including a study about how rate shock warnings might be "overblown."
CNN: HHS Finalizes More Obamacare Policies
As part of its continued effort to solidify Affordable Care Act regulations before insurance exchanges open on October 1, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a new rule on Wednesday clarifying how a number of issues will be handled in the new marketplaces. "The overarching goal is to safeguard federal funds and to protect consumers by ensuring that issuers, marketplaces, and other entities comply with federal standards meant to ensure consumers have access to quality, affordable health insurance," the department said in a press release (Aigner-Treworgy, 8/28).
The Wall Street Journal: Prepaid Debit Cards Allowed As Health-Insurance Payment
The Obama administration said Wednesday it would require insurers to let uninsured Americans pay for health coverage this fall with prepaid debit cards rather than limit them to bank-account transfers, though it won't require insurers to accept automatic monthly payments from credit or debit cards. Allowing prepaid cards is aimed at ensuring millions of lower-income Americans can sign up for coverage even if they don't have checking accounts (Radnofsky, 8/28).
The Associated Press: 4 Tips For Savvy Health Care Shopping
Your employer and President Obama are imploring you to become a better health care consumer. They want everyone to take a more active role in their care because it's vital to help slow the seemingly perpetual rise of health care expenses (Murphy, 8/28).
The Courier-Journal/USA Today: Study: Obamacare Rate Concerns 'Overblown'
With Affordable Care Act set to begin in earnest next year, fears are mounting that insurance premiums will skyrocket when American workers re-enroll for health benefits through their jobs. But experts and a newly released study say those fears appear largely unfounded (Ungar, 8/29).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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