Benefits Business Blog » health care

Judge strike down health care law

admin — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:22:24 +0000

A federal judge in Virginia declared the foundation of President Obama’s health care law unconstitutional because the government cannot require Americans to purchase insurance. No court, according to the judge, had expanded the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution to allow the government to regulate a person’s decision not to buy a product. In this case, health care.

In his order, he said he will allow the law to remain in effect while appeals are heard, meaning there is unlikely to be any immediate impact on other provisions that have already taken effect. The insurance coverage mandate is not scheduled to begin until 2014.

While two other federal judges have upheld the law, the conflicting ruling is going to eventually be settled by the Supreme Court.

Paperwork Nightmare

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:07:28 +0000

The new health care law could become a paperwork nightmare. The piece of legislation has a requirement that could become a paperwork nightmare for nearly 40 million businesses.

Businesses must file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods.

The goal is to prevent vendors from underreporting their income to the Internal Revenue Service. The government must think vendors are omitting a lot because the filing requirement is estimated to bring in $19 billion over the next decade.

It remains to be seen for congress can work together to fix this.

Individual Health Premium Go Up

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:23:50 +0000

With Congress sitting on their asses and failing to get a Health care plan worked out because the Democratic lost their majority, individual who buy their own health insurance are facing a huge rate increase in at least four states.

Blue Cross has announced or has notified some of its 800,000 individual policyholders in California that it plans to raise their rates by up to 39 percent on March 1, 2010.

Blue Cross has also elected to raise the rates of their consumers in Maine up to 32 percent.

Individuals in Kansas and Oregon will also face rate increases in varying amounts.

Premiums are far more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which have bargaining clout and a sizable pool of people among which to spread risk. As more people have lost jobs, many who are healthy have decided to go without health insurance or get a bare-bones, high-deductible policy, reducing the amount of premiums insurers receive.

Its fucking crazy what these insurance companies are allowed to do especially in such hard economic times. Who these days can afford to survive much less pay for their insurance policy.