Insurers Plan to Significantly Raise Premiums – Citing huge losses on ACA plans.

Continued Disapproval Of ACA – A new survey released by the Pew Research Center found that 54 percent of consumers still disapprove of it. Data show 31 percent of respondents believe the ACA “has had a mostly negative effect on them and their families.”

An End To Protections For People With Serious Illnesses, Pre-Existing Conditions. – The ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions are raising costs and limiting options for everyone. Under the ACA, insurers cannot charge higher premiums for people with serious illnesses, or deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Suggestions are to end these protections, and create risk pools by states so that these consumers “can get affordable coverage. … You dramatically lower the price for everybody else. You make health insurance so much more affordable, so much more competitive and open up competition.”

Medicare Physician Reimbursement Proposal Could Reduce Number Of Practices. – A new proposal “designed to change how Medicare pays clinicians represent[s] the most sweeping overhaul the CMS has made in a long time to the business of running a physician practice.” The objective is to have most Medicare reimbursements “flow through payment models that reward doctors for the quality of care they deliver, not just how many patients they see.” These changes could “upend the way medicine is practiced today, accelerating the move toward hospital employment and making the small group practice a thing of the past.”

Audit Finds IRS Overpaid Some ACA Plan Enrollees By $8 Million. – An audit conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the “IRS mistakenly overpaid more than $8 million to HealthCare.gov customers and Obamacare users in California, and cheated tens of thousands of others out of nearly $2 million in 2015 because the government relied on incorrect information to figure their taxes.” Data show some “70,850 filers received $8.3 million in federal subsidies that they didn’t deserve, while roughly 69,400 taxpayers missed out on $1.9 million they should have got.” The article says the issue resulted “from erroneous forms the government sent to about 800,000 customers, which used the wrong benchmark to measure what their Obamacare payments should have been.”

More Employers Hiring Freelancers Due To Costs Associated With ACA. – Employers are getting rid of health benefits by shrinking their full-time workforce and hiring freelancers due to the increase in costs caused by the Affordable Care Act. Data show about “one-third of companies intend to work towards ‘eliminating’ healthcare benefits because of the ACA…and 60 percent of companies intend to hire more freelance employees than full-time employees.”