OVERNIGHT HEALTH: GOP launches O-Care delay probe

GOP lawmakers are launching an investigation into the second, partial delay of ObamaCare’s employer mandate. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pushed the Treasury Department for documents, including analyses of the delay’s possible impact and any communications with the White House on the matter.

Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement that the administration should “deliver the facts with the same priority it has put behind its many [ObamaCare] delays.” The probe is unsurprising given the wave of GOP criticism after the administration announced that some mid-size firms will not have to offer health insurance to their workers for another year.

{mosads}Elise Viebeck at The Hill reports.

Moody’s: A leading credit rating agency is panning two proposed changes to ObamaCare’s implementation as negative for health insurance companies. Moody’s Investors Service said Thursday that requiring insures to expand their provider networks and allowing patients to keep non-compliant health plans for an additional two years could harm insurers and raise prices on the exchanges. The firm also characterized this week’s second, partial delay of the employer mandate as frustrating and logistically complicated for the insurance industry. Elise Viebeck at The Hill reports.

Premiums: More than three months after ObamaCare’s launch, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is developing a system to track enrollees who have made premium payments. The CMS would be able to track premium payments through the “834 form” generated on the back end of the system and transmitted from HealthCare.gov to the insurers when someone selects a plan online. A CMS official told The Hill some issuers were already providing these “effectuated 834 transaction forms,” which will eventually be “the mechanism for making payment and reporting enrollment data as part of our automated system.”

Jonathan Easley at The Hill reports.

Advantage: House Republican leaders on Thursday wrote to President Obama voicing their “deep concern” over expected cuts to the Medicare Advantage program that they blame on the president’s healthcare law.

The administration is expected to announce the 2015 rates for the popular alternative to government health insurance on Feb. 21, and insurers bracing for cuts have mounted an intense lobbying campaign to head them off. The GOP leaders touted Medicare Advantage in their letter and said any cuts to the program, coupled with new rule-making from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “will force millions of American seniors to face higher health care costs or lose access to their doctor, health plan, lifesaving drugs, and the benefits they’ve come to rely on.” Russell Berman at The Hill reports.

State by State:
 
Oregon works to clean up its healthcare exchange.

Privacy breaches at the Vermont healthcare exchange.

GOP-led states beating enrollment goals.

Reading List:

Opinion: Latest ObamaCare delay is probably illegal.

Opinion: Don’t let Mark Udall’s ObamaCare scandal slide.

ADHD drugs have no lasting or positive effects.
 

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