Employee Benefit Advisors believes the following is important information. It supports EBA’s belief that Healthcare is best served by the private sector. Imagine the total number of policies and comprehensive coverage if either a) the government had given one billion dollars away for insurance premiums, or b) allocated one billion dollars in claims for the uninsured. As for Medicare, we are headed for trouble. (Or, the unthinkable, reduce a debt.)

Health Reform Weekly – A weekly compilation from Aetna of health care-related developments in Washington, D.C. and state legislatures across the country. Week of August 4, 2014

A new General Accounting Office (GAO) report released last week found that the government did not plan well and did not properly oversee the launch of the new federal health exchange in October. The report went on to warn that the problem-plagued federal website still faces risks for the next open enrollment period unless oversight is increased and continuing back-end issues are resolved. The original contractor for the site has been replaced because of the flawed rollout, but some key federal marketplace capabilities remain unavailable. Congressional auditors noted that Healthcare.gov costs are now running close to $1 billion.

In other news, the Medicare and Social Security Board of Trustees has issued its 2014 annual report on the financial health of the Medicare program, projecting that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will exhaust its reserves in 2030, four years later than projected last year. The trustees project “slight surpluses in 2015 through 2022, with a return to deficits thereafter until the fund becomes depleted in 2030.” This improvement is attributed primarily to factors that include lower-than-expected spending in 2013 for most hospital service categories.