News tagged with 'Health Insurance'

Sen. Max Baucus had no Republican support for his health reform bill and the White House is lukewarm. The plan does not go far enough for some Democrats, while big insurance says it goes too far in taxing them, even though it does not contain a public option.

Americans could be hit with hefty fines for failing to buy health insurance under a new plan put on the table by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) a moderate who heads the influential Finance Committee.

Coverage Denied, a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, examines the insurance company practice of denying coverage and discriminating against millions of Americans who have pre-existing medical conditions.

If booing, jeering and fear promoting ads on television are any indication, the president has a tough road ahead of him on making health care reform the test of his presidency.

Families USA Report “Squeezed! Caught between Unemployment Benefits and Health Care Costs” finds that more than half of the unemployed are caught between making too much to qualify for Medicaid, yet being unable to afford Cobra. This is the target population the economic stimulus is designed to benefit.

State Farm says that since it didn't get a 47 percent rate hike it will stop offering property insurance to more than one million Floridians. Insurance is among the most profitable of industries with CEOs at the top of the pay scale.

One thing is unlikely to change under the Obama administration: growing support for federally funded community help centers. President Bush has doubled federal financing for clinics which serve the poor and underinsured in urban neighborhoods and rural counties where health care is lacking, reports the New York Times.

Cover Florida offers low-cost health insurance to those who have been without for at least six months or whose COBRA payments have run out. It's predicted up to 3 million Floridians could take advantage of the 25 plans which are not subsized by the government.

Having employer-sponsored health coverage does not necessarily extend to the children in the family, this published study finds. Millions of children are going without insurance, even when one parent is covered.

While the U.S. Census Bureau in its August report finds that slightly more Americans have health insurance, that is largely due to increasing enrollments from the state and federal government.  As the troubled economy forces employers and states to cut costs further, many fear our insurance crisis is not over.

Health insurers in Florida had a good year in 2007.
$550 million in profits were enjoyed among the seven major carriers, a drop of $170 million from the year before. Still four million Floridians go uninsured and premiums for employers keep rising.

A California for-profit insurer, Health Net says it will mend its ways after a judge awarded a woman $9 million, most of it in punative damages against Health Net for canceling her policy while she was undergoing breast cancer treatments.