Posted by: AtlasMD

December 19, 2013

And The Red Tape Thickens… HHS Now Demands Free Coverage For Those Affected By ACA

Do you have even an inkling of support for free market policies? A modicum of belief in free enterprise? Here’s a stop-whatever-you’re-doing article from Forbes writer Avik Roy. He reports on disheartening news in light of recent ACA failures.

From Forbes.com > Government Takeover: White House Forces Obamacare Insurers To Cover Unpaid Patients At A Loss

Roy opens with a rally cry, saying, “Of all of the last-minute delays, website bungles, and Presidential whims that have marred the roll-out of Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges, what happened on Thursday, December 12 will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration.” The White House—who’s already canceled Americans’ old health plans, and has botched the system for enrolling people in new ones—is well aware that millions of Americans are going to enter the new year without health coverage. Yet instead of actually fixing anything, they have a new solution. They are going to to try to retroactively force insurers to hand out free health care—even at a potential loss—to those people uninsured through the White House-induced fiasco. Roy asks, “If Obamacare wasn’t a government takeover of the health insurance industry, then what is it now?”

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Posted by: AtlasMD

August 15, 2013

Man Behind “Meaningful Use” Resigns From High-Ranking HHS Position

farzadAccording to Modern Healthcare, “Dr. Farzad Mostashari will step down this fall as head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, where he’s had a big hand in guiding federal health IT policy for the past four years, including the challenging rollout of meaningful-use rules for electronic health-record systems.” This might sound out of blue, but there’s a reason we’re sharing this–Mostashari brought the phrase “meaningful use” into existence.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

July 23, 2013

LINKS: Will “Federal Data Services Hub” Pose An Obamacare Privacy Risk?

LINKS: Will “Federal Data Services Hub” Pose An Obamacare Privacy Risk?

We came across an opinionated article on Rare.us asking, “Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information?” Our immediate answer was of course not. But with Obamacare’s enactment, we might not have a choice. That’s because of something called the Federal Data Services Hub. This Data Hub will supposedly be a comprehensive database of personal information established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to help with the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges.

To paraphrase, with Obamacare, each state will need to have a transparent state insurance market (currently not every state has one). If a state creates and operates one themselves, then great. But if they don’t, the government will “run” one for them. And to help “run” this state insurance market, the Obama administration is planning to hire “tens of thousands” of “navigators” earning “$20 an hour or more” to help guide buyers to their taxpayer-funded coverage, according to the Washington Examiner.

Here’s a round-up of articles to give you a more complete picture of the Federal Data Services Hub:

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