Small Businesses cancelling Health Insurance plans for Employees

The US government promised that HealthCare.gov will be ready and run without glitch by the end of this week. However, CBS News reports that employees form small businesses are losing their insurance coverage. 

The government estimated that millions of workers would be dropped from their work insurance under the Affordable Care Act, it's already happening now.

Nancy Clark owns a small business in New Hampshire, she was featured last year in a White House video blog, said that things are not right for her plan. She said that her insurer will increase her rates by 39: starting next year. Insurance that will cost her an additional $30,000.

Because of this she decided to terminate the insurance she's offered her 8 employees and turn to Obamacare, but there's been one problem after another.

“We’re experiencing technical difficulties. That's the nature of the beast,” said Clark.

Betsy Atkinson owns a business in Virginia Beach is also cancelling company insurance because her plan doesn't meet new Obamacare requirements and she can't afford to offer employees one that does.

“They’re going to have to go find their own insurance,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Chao: Health Insurance Marketplace is Still Incomplete

Henry Chao the deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that the federal health insurance marketplace is not yet complete. He said that they are still building the “back office systems." 

“we still have to build the financial management aspects of the system, which includes our accounting system and payment system and reconciliation system,” he said. "This part is still being developed and will be tested."

He admitted Tuesday that up to 40 percent of IT systems supporting the exchange still need to be built.

The Obama government completed the online system which allowed consumers to apply for insurance, compare health plans and enroll however, many parts of the system were still being repaired and were not performing as well as they had hoped.

“It’s not that it’s not working,” Chao told lawmakers at an Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing. “It’s still being developed and tested.”

Financial management tools are not yet done, he said, particularly the process that will deliver payments to insurers.

Goodbye Trans Fat?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last Thursday it will phase out trans fats that
would eliminate artery-clogging from our diet. This will give manufacturers and restaurant some problems and may cause prices to shoot up but will be beneficial to our health.

Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner of FDA said that this move will prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year. But critics say that this is just a political move since the real threat to our health is not trans fat but the increased use of pesticides on our food and genetically engineered foods. Trans fats are identified and labeled on our food but in the case for genetically engineered foods and pesticide laden food no information are given to consumers.

Chris Shanahan of Frost & Sullivan market research firm said that if FDA bans trans fat "in the long term, prices of certain foods will increase and different foods will be discontinued."


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Will You Buy Twitter IPO shares?

New York Stock Exchange welcomes Twitter on Thursday November 7, 2013. They will have the symbol TWTR and their share is priced at $26 each to raise around $2.1 billion.

Twitter is part of our everyday life for most of us and it has a lot of media attention which is why there is a great demand for its shares. However, be very cautious remember Facebook? a lot of people were burned by it. The best thing to do is wait. There's no guarantee the stock will trade higher, and if you would look at several recent social media IPOs, the stocks actually dropped like facebook.

Happy Halloween 2013

 

Happy Halloween to all you guys! Stay Safe and Party Hard!

Infographics on Why Others Can't Keep Their Old Insurance Plans

Check out the Infographics done by NYTimes, which explains why some people can't keep their insurance plans. It is very detailed and easy to comprehend. President Barrack Obama promised that people can keep their old insurance plan under the Obamacare, however the truth is most need to buy a new plan.

Obamacare website Utter Failure

Obamacare website has been a total disappointment from start. When healthcare.gov was opened to public on October 1, 2013 it crashed and the government blamed the overwhelming visitors of the site. It's now fixed, but there are new unresolved problems particularly in name registration, eligibility questions and in the most important step of buying insurance. It led users to cryptic error messages or enduring long waits when trying to sign up.

The number of Obamacare website problems since the website opened has been deeply embarrassing for the White House. The drawbacks have called into question whether the Obama administration is capable of implementing the complex policy they seems to be unaware of the scope of the problems when the exchange sites opened.

Even Obama acknowledges problems:

“Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the website is not working as well as it should, which means it’s gonna get fixed,” Obama said.

He even turn to an ex-adviser Jeffrey Zients, he is the former acting director of the White House budget office.

A person close to the project said that "No way it was properly tested before it went live" since the website is full of bugs and junk computer codes.