Healthcare Compliance Inc

Wednesday, 13 February 2019

ACA Employer Mandate | House Democrats Trot Out First Bills to Shore Up Obamacare

WASHINGTON (CN) – House Democrats rolled out new bills Wednesday clapping back at Republican efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, specifically targeting short-term, limited-duration insurance policies.

The four bills introduced Wednesday are the first steps in reversing the Trump administration’s rollbacks for President Barack Obama’s landmark health care legislation, cuts that included slashing advertising and outreach budget by 90 percent. The Trump administration also eased the process of approval for Section 1332 requests, which allows states to waive certain requirements of the Affordable Care Act in favor of state-focused health coverage options.

But these efforts have “sabotaged” the Affordable Care Act’s potency, committee Democrats say. By slashing enrollment advertising and encouraging potential state subsidies of short-term coverage plans, healthy young people are choosing cheaper, sub-par coverage that drive up premiums for everyone else opting for government health care.

Monday, 21 January 2019

ACA Penalty Reduction Service | Judge Says Affordable Care Act Will Remain In Effect During Appeal

(CNN)The federal judge who declared the Affordable Care Act’s individual coverage mandate unconstitutional earlier this month issued an order on Sunday saying despite his previous ruling the law can remain in effect pending appeal.

Texas federal District Judge Reed O’Connor said in his ruling that “many everyday Americans would otherwise face great uncertainty during the pendency of appeal.”

Sunday’s order also paves the way for a coalition of Democratic states defending the law to appeal O’Connor’s original ruling.

O’Connor had ruled that the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional because Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty by reducing it to $0. This rendered the mandate itself unconstitutional and the rest of the act therefore cannot stand. However, he did not issue an injunction to stop federal and state governments from enforcing the law.

Monday, 10 December 2018

Spot Audit On Previous ACA Filings | Annual Tradition Continues – 2018 Employee Statement Deadline Extended along with Good Faith Effort Standard

On November 29, 2018 the IRS provided every employer an automatic extension from the deadline to furnish the Form 1095-C statements to individuals. Additionally, the IRS extended the good faith efforts standard to the 2018 Forms. Both of these items are beneficial to employers but also will make the IRS less forgiving of late filers. Notice 2018-94 provides transition relief by extending the due date for the Form 1095-C statements that were to be furnished to individuals by January 31, 2019 to March 4, 2019. Importantly, the permissive extension discussed in the instructions to the Form 1095-C no longer applies to the individual statement deadline. Therefore, the March 4, 2019 deadline for furnishing the Form 1095-C statements is now a hard deadline. The Notice states the Service will not even respond to employers requesting an extension beyond the March 4, 2019 deadline.

Similar to last year, Notice 2018-94 does not provide an extension for the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C which are to be provided to the IRS. The deadline to file the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS is February 28, 2019 if the employer is filing on paper. If an employer is filing electronically, the deadline is April 1, 2019. An employer can still complete a Form 8809 to receive an automatic 30 day extension.

Questions? info@healthcare-compliance-inc.com 800-325-1333

Notice 2018-94 also extends the good faith efforts standard to the 2018 Forms so long as an employer complies with the new deadline for furnishing the statement to individuals and the old deadline for filing the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS. The transition relief discussed in Notice 2018-94 only applies to the 2018 Forms.

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About the author – Ryan Moulder serves as General Counsel at Accord Systems, LLC, provides Legal Counsel to Healthcare Compliance Inc. and is a Partner at Health Care Attorney’s P.C. Ryan received his LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and his J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law. He has distinguished himself as a leader in the Affordable Care Act arena and has written and spoken on a variety of ACA topics as it relates to compliance for companies.

The post Spot Audit On Previous ACA Filings | Annual Tradition Continues – 2018 Employee Statement Deadline Extended along with Good Faith Effort Standard appeared first on ACA Reporting Service | Obamacare Compliance | Health Care Compliance Inc..

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Wednesday, 21 November 2018

ACA Penalty Reduction Service | IRS Letter 226J Could Propose Millions of Dollars in ACA Penalties

Why should your organization care about IRS Letter 226J? Well, it could propose millions of dollars in ACA penalties against your organization.

The Letter 226J notices are being sent to certain larger employers the IRS believes have failed to comply with the requirements of the Employer Mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for the 2015 tax year. To date, the IRS has issued more than 30,000 of these notices proposing penalty assessments of over $4.4 billion. A report from the Congressional Budget Office has stated these penalty assessments could total up to $12 billion in 2018.

Under the Employer Mandate, Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), organizations with 50 or more full-time employees and full-time equivalent employees, are required to offer minimum essential coverage to at least 95% of their full-time workforce (and their dependents) whereby such coverage meets minimum value and is affordable for the employee or be subject to IRS 4980H penalties.

Monday, 15 October 2018

ACA Compliance Packages | Alex Azar Says Premiums To Drop For Affordable Care Act Plan

WASHINGTON — Premiums for a popular type of “silver” health plan under the Affordable Care Act will edge downward next year in most states, the Trump administration’s health chief announced Thursday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said premiums for a so-called “benchmark” silver plan will drop by 2 percent in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

The number of marketplace insurers will grow for the first time since 2015, he added.

Azar’s numbers were in line with a broader independent analysis earlier this month by Avalere Health and The Associated Press, which found premiums and markets stabilizing nationwide. But his claim that the Trump administration deserves credit for “Obamacare’s” turnabout was quickly challenged.

Friday, 5 October 2018

ACA Employer Reporting | Obamacare About to Become More Affordable For Many People

(CNN)It will likely cost a little less to buy the benchmark Obamacare plan next year. The rate could drop for the first time since the Affordable Care Act exchanges opened in 2014.

The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange is expected to decline by 2% for 2019, Health Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday.

The predicted decline for next year comes after a 37% spike for this year’s benchmark silver plan, upon which premium subsidies are based.

The number of insurers on the federal exchange also will grow for the first time since 2015, Azar said. Over the past two years, 44% of carriers have dropped out of the program.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers Obamacare, typically releases a more detailed look at the upcoming year’s premiums and insurer participation in late October. Open enrollment begins November 1 and runs through December 15 in most states.

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

ACA Reporting Service | Affordable Care Act Under Fire Again In Federal Court

The long-disputed fate of the Affordable Care Act played out anew in a Fort Worth courtroom Wednesday as a score of Republican-led states sought to persuade a federal judge to halt the sprawling health-care law.

In the latest legal threat to the 2010 law, the coalition of GOP attorney’s general and a pair of governors argued that a recent change in federal tax policy has made the ACA unconstitutional. For the short-term, they asked a federal judge to grant a preliminary injunction that would suspend the law while the rest of the case unfolds — a possibility that could throw significant aspects of the U.S. health-care system into chaos.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a conservative jurist appointed by President George W. Bush, did not immediately rule on the request or indicate when he would do so. He asked more frequent and pointed questions of the parties arguing in favor of the ACA, while asking the opponents mainly about the impact of a preliminary injunction or an outright ruling against the law.