Premium Review Forum

By Martha Stoddard
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — Jennifer Piatt normally isn’t much of a gambler.

But the Creighton University law student has been forced to take a chance on her 9-year-old daughter’s health this year.

“I’m just hoping she doesn’t get sick,” said Piatt, who added that she can afford and was willing to purchase a private policy for Isabelle.

Piatt’s plight stems from a provision of the federal law that bans insurance companies from denying or limiting coverage of children with pre-existing health conditions.

From: The Economist

 by W.W. | IOWA CITY

LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF, a professor of economics at Boston University, warns that fiscal doomsday is rapidly drawing nigh. 

CBO’s baseline budget updates suggest the date for reaching what Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff and other prominent economists believe is a critical insolvency threshold—a 90 percent ratio of federal debt held by the public to gross domestic product—has moved four years closer, in just nine months!

From: CTMirror.com

The federal health reform law is meant to expand health insurance coverage, but some advocates worry that it could inadvertently leave some low-income adults in Connecticut worse off.

They want the state to take action now to ensure that doesn’t happen, but that idea has critics, including, for now, the Malloy administration.

Beginning in 2014, states will be required to provide Medicaid coverage to adults earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level. Those just above the Medicaid income threshold will receive federal tax credits to buy insurance through the exchange, a marketplace that will be created for purchasing coverage.

From: The Hill

North Dakota has joined a handful of states in asking the Obama administration for relief from a provision of the landmark healthcare law enacted almost a year ago.

From: News-Medical.net

CQ HealthBeat: Florida Petitions HHS For Medical Payout Rule Exception
Florida is the fifth state — and by far the most populous — to file a petition asking for an adjustment to federal medical loss ratio rules for individual health insurance, saying that there is a “reasonable likelihood” that the new rules would disrupt the state’s insurance market. Delaying the rule until full implementation of the health care law in 2014 “will allow insurers to prepare for a smooth glide to the new realities of 2014 rather than falling off a cliff and hobbling there on crutches,” says a petition filed by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (Norman, 3/14).