American Medical Association seeks open market-style health insurance exchanges

The American Medical Association has started to apply pressure to the states in order to send the system in a direction that would permit all health insurance companies of meeting the minimum standards to take part in the insurance exchanges that will be created by 2014 as a part of the healthcare overhaul. This significant doctors organization has announced that it will be putting its full support behind the health insurance exchange structure that allows for an open marketplace instead of the “active purchaser” style alternative. That latter technique would…

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Healthcare work force receives $1 billion from Obama administration to boost its size

The Obama administration has announced that it will be offering a grant program worth $1 billion to provide medical organizations with the opportunity to hire, train, and implementation of new workers. According to an announcement from the administration, the grant program has been named the Health Care Innovation Challenge and has been created in order to discover “the most compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care and lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.” Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen…

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Electronic medical records present high risk to insurance industry

As per new federal laws, the nation’s medical records will soon be stored electronically. These new electronic records will be a part of the state-run health insurance exchange programs that are designed to help consumers find affordable health care. Insurers participating in these programs will have access to a person’s medical records to help price insurance policies. Going electronic has some major risks, however, and these risks have never been more apparent than they are today. While the advancement of technology has brought many benefits to humanity as a whole,…

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Crop insurance a key part of Obama’s federal deficit remedy.

President Obama unveiled his plans to tackle the federal deficit Monday. One of the ways the administration will confront the federal deficit is by making changes to the overarching agricultural infrastructure of the nation. Obama is looking to provide farmers with a $5 billion annual subsidy that will help them regulate the price of crops and purchase crop insurance in order to guard against natural disasters. This will remove the direct payment structure that has been in place in the industry since 1996, however, a move that has garnered a…

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Missouri postpones further health insurance exchange efforts

Following the voicing of concerns by several Republican senators, insurance officials from Missouri have taken a step back away from intentions to begin spending millions of dollars from the federal government on an investment into the computer technology that would be required to put a central element of the new federal health care law into place. In August, Missouri had been awarded a federal grant of $21 million to be applied to the preparation for the health insurance exchange to be created and run by the state and would allow…

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