The state Attorney General's office is looking at whether United Healthcare, which offers senior care option plans to Medicare-eligible Massachusetts seniors, has been billing the state for a level of care some of its subscribers don't need. Read more.
An East Boston man who says he's out $55,000 for the cost of removing his appendix is suing a group that claims to provide a lower-cost, "faith-based" alternative to regular health insurance, but which he says refused to pay for his surgery. Read more.
Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care announced today that after their merger this fall, they will have a new corporate name: Point32Health. Read more.
WBZ reports the Massachusetts Health Connector has extended enrollment through March 23. In the Before Times, enrollment ended in January.
The state Health Connector, which normally only allows insurance enrollment November through January, says people without health insurance can now apply for it through April 25. Read more.
The state Department of Public Health reported five new Covid-19 cases in Massachusetts today - three of them apparently contracted at a meeting of Biogen employees at the Marriott Long Wharf last week. Read more.
NBC Boston reports Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care are looking to become a single insurer. No word on which college name will get dropped from the new entity or if they'll just have a computer generate some nebulous sounding new name.
There's one of those cut-and-paste viral things going around Facebook these days that says you only have until Dec. 15 to apply for health insurance via the ACA.
This is only true for people who live in a state that uses the federal system. But if you live in Massachusetts, which has its own health-connector system, you have until Jan. 23 to apply. Read more.
The State House News Service reports on an announcement today by the Massachusetts Health Connector to limit increases for "silver" plans to 10.5% for next year, rather than the 26% that would be required should the president just halt subsidies called for in the health-care law he has failed repeatedly to get repealed in Congress. "Copper" subscribers will see an average increase of nearly 14%, the Health Connector says, adding it is continuing to try to figure out what to do if the subsidies are held up.
Federal laws that let employers strip birth-control coverage from workers violate the First Amendment ban on government support of religion and are sexist and so violate the the Fifth Amendment right to equal protection, state Attorney General Maura Healey argues in a suit filed yesterday. Read more.
The Hill reports on a letter signed by Baker and other governors of both parties on a possible Senate measure that could lead to the destruction of the state's current health-insurance system.
The letter comes even as the state House of Representatives was rejecting Baker's proposal to move large number of people off MassHealth and into privately-run insurance plans.
WBUR interviews people who think a lot about health care, including the CEO of Boston Medical Center, on what happens now that Republicans who campaigned against Obamacare for seven years couldn't repeal it even after taking control of the federal government.
The Globe reports: Mass. seen as insulated from a Trump repeal of Obamacare. The reason has to do with our preexisting condition of Romneycare; the Globe quotes Gov. Baker (formerly head of Harvard Pilgrim) as vowing to keep the state system running.
WBUR's CommonHealth has a series of essays on the tenth anniversary of our health-insurance law that got adapted for national use.
Steve Garfield of Jamaica Plain explains why he's thrown up his hands and given up on the Mass. Health Connector after more than a month of trying to figure out, without success, why the state accepted his first payment for a new health insurer yet never sent it to that company. So with five days left before his new insurance was supposed to start, he's now dealing directly with the insurer: Read more.
Daniel Quinn chronicles what is now a 4+ month effort to fix problems with his Health Connector-based health insurance.
August 18. I need some medicine. So far I have not used my insurance for anything, I am just sending the government money, for no reason really when it comes down to it, gambling every month in an absurd game against my destiny. I decide to pick this medicine up at the local CVS, and learn that my insurance has been rendered “inactive.” I am refused the medicine unless I pay full-price ($400 for something that costs $25 with insurance). I feel like the hobbits returning to the Shire after it has been taken over by the dark wizard Saruman. That same day, I receive another fascinating bill that declares I owe (negative?!) -$300.41 for my dental plan (a plan that costs $34 a month, mind you), and $1005.15 for my health–an account for which I was overcharged nearly $700 but a month before.
Although yesterday was the deadline for signing up for health insurance through the state Health Connector, the state has extended the deadline for paying for the first month's coverage until Dec. 28, the Boston Business Journal reports.
Normally, a typo wouldn't be such a big deal, but when you're talking about the new Web site the state says will fix all the problems in the old, broken Health Connector site at a cost of gazillions, yeah, it kind of is. Also, as Steve Garfield notes, when he pointed out the typo in a state tweet (the URL's missing an "o" in "connector"), the state did, well, nothing.
Ed Lyons analyzes, in great detail, the failure of the health-connector system in Massachusetts, the state that pioneered the very idea:
Yet somehow, no one was held accountable for the largest, most spectacular failure of state government in many years. On February 13, at a public Health Connector Board meeting, Executive Director Jean Yang broke down and cried about what had happened. Yet she, along with everyone else in the exchange project, never accepted responsibility, and she remains in charge to this day.
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