“Yes! Student loan debt is one of the most difficult financial issues facing new grads. Rising costs of tuition/education can make it hard for new grads to get a start in life – whether it be buying their first home, purchasing a new vehicle or affording other key items or investments.
Posts Tagged ‘Kane’
Should companies begin offering student-loan help to employees?
Monday, May 20th, 2019Health insurance deductibles soar, leaving Americans with unaffordable bills
Monday, May 20th, 2019“Soaring deductibles and medical bills are pushing millions of American families to the breaking point, fueling an affordability crisis that is pulling in middle-class households with health insurance as well as the poor and uninsured.
In the last 12 years, annual deductibles in job-based health plans have nearly quadrupled and now average more than $1,300.
Why Hospitals Should Fear Blue Cross Primary Care Centers
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2019“As if hospitals and health systems didn’t have enough emerging threats with big well capitalized publicly-traded insurance companies and drugstore chains developing primary care clinics and urgent care centers in their backyards.
Now come the nation’s largest Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans that dominate big diverse markets like Florida, Illinois, Texas and New Jersey. These Blues plans are backed by their own financing, venture capital funds and primary care partners looking to expand doctor offices, urgent care and health centers in communities across the country. (more…)
Can Health Savings Accounts Be a Bulwark Against Long-Term Care Costs?
Tuesday, August 21st, 2018“Many retirement accumulators take pains to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of their retirement plans. They noodle over their portfolios’ asset allocations, carefully calibrate when they’ll begin claiming Social Security benefits, and think hard about withdrawal rates.
But many such painstaking retirement planners don’t give another major variable more than the periodic anxious thought: how to pay for long-term care. And is it any wonder so many people are in denial? For one thing, it’s a flip of the coin as to whether you’ll need long-term care: 52% of people turning 65 are expected to have a long-term care need during their lifetimes, and another 48% will not. The prospect of needing long-term care is inherently unpleasant, and that care can also be ruinously expensive, running upward of $100,000 per year in urban areas.
(more…)
Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance Final Rule
Tuesday, August 21st, 2018“Background
The Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to consider allowing short-term, limited-duration insurance to cover longer periods and be renewed by the consumer on February 21, 2018 in response to both stakeholder input in the Request for Information “Reducing Regulatory Burdens Imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act & Improving Healthcare Choices to Empower Patients,” as well as Executive Order 13813 entitled “Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States.”
Most common questions about ACA insurance
Tuesday, September 19th, 2017“Welcome to Fix My Finances, a Yahoo Finance personal finance series. Each episode, we take a look at one viewer’s financial state of affairs and offer advice, insight and information on a variety of issues, including how to save more, spend less and pay off lingering debt.
Illinois’ stack of unpaid medical bills now reaches $3.5 billion
Thursday, April 6th, 2017Crain’s Chicago Business reports:
“The state budget stalemate, which has stretched on for nearly two years, is putting lives on the line, according to emotional testimony out of the Illinois House yesterday.
That’s because the state’s now $12.6 billion backlog also includes months and months of unpaid medical bills on behalf of state workers and retirees. At last count, the state owed $3.5 billion in medical bills for its employees, according to a spokesman for the Illinois comptroller. In early March, a dental lobbying group said dentists who treat state employees were owed a collective $174 million.
Largest Texas Health Insurer Requests to Raise Premiums on Individual Policies
Tuesday, June 14th, 2016Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBS), which insures approximately 603,000 individual Texas policyholders, announced a proposal to raise premiums on three popular Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) plans by almost 60 percent. The rate hike follows a report by BCBS citing substantial financial losses in the second year of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges.
The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare,” established marketplaces—or exchanges—where people without other health insurance can buy coverage. Filings from healthcare.gov show BCBS is seeking increases between 57.3 percent and 59.3 percent for two of its Blue Advantage Plus Plans. A 58.6 percent hike has been requested for the Blue Advantage Health Maintenance Organization Plan.
Blue Cross Blue Shield Confirms Obamacare Death Spiral
Thursday, April 28th, 2016According to The Beacon:
” The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which represents 36 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans covering 105 million Americans, has just released a study of its members’ claims data in Obamacare exchanges 2014 and 2015. It confirms that Obamacare exchange enrollees are sicker and more expensive than enrollees in pre-Obamacare individual plans or employer-based plans.
Here I quote four of the study’s findings:
- Members who newly enrolled in BCBS individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 have higher rates of certain diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C than individuals who had BCBS individual coverage prior to health-care reform.
- Consumers who newly enrolled in BCBS individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 received significantly more medical care, on average, than those with BCBS individual plans prior to 2014 who maintained BCBS individual health coverage into 2015, as well as those with BCBS employer-based group health insurance.
