Facing Millions In Penalties, Companies Push Back On IRS Decision To Enforce ACA Employer Mandate
The health law imposes a penalty on employers with more than 50 workers who don’t provide qualifying coverage to employees, but the fines weren’t initially enforced.
The Wall Street Journal:
Businesses Challenge IRS Bid To Start Enforcing Insurance Mandate
Businesses are pushing back on the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to begin enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s employer insurance mandate, challenging penalties that run into the millions and asserting the agency is wrong to impose the fines. The ACA imposes a penalty on employers with more than 50 workers who don’t provide qualifying coverage to employees, but the fines weren’t initially enforced. In November, the IRS said it would begin assessing penalties, starting with companies that failed to comply in 2015, when parts of the employer mandate first kicked in. (Armour, 2/13)
In other national health care news —
The Hill:
Ryan Calls For 'Incremental' Health Reforms After Failure Of ObamaCare Repeal
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is calling for "incremental" health-care reform after the Senate failed to pass an ObamaCare replacement bill last year. Asked on Fox Business on Tuesday if lawmakers will try again to pass an ObamaCare repeal legislation this year, Ryan pointed to incremental changes. (Sullivan, 2/13)
The Hill:
Planned Parenthood Announces Nationwide Push For Abortion, Birth Control Legislation
Planned Parenthood on Tuesday announced a nationwide initiative to expand access to abortion, birth control and reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood, its affiliates, state lawmakers and other partners will roll out legislation in more than a dozen states this week that it says will expand access to sexual and reproductive care, with a plan to advance initiatives in all 50 states by the end of the year. (Hellmann, 2/13)
The Washington Post:
Sanders Claims White House Budget Would Kill Thousands But Mulvaney Says That’s Not True
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) berated White House budget director Mick Mulvaney over President Trump’s budget proposal Tuesday, contending that thousands of people would die and others would freeze because of the administration’s proposed cuts. Sanders was referring specifically to the budget proposal’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act and cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. (Werner, 2/13)
Reuters:
U.S. Can Sue UnitedHealth In $1 Billion Medicare Case, Judge Rules
A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Justice Department can move forward with a lawsuit claiming UnitedHealth Group Inc wrongly retained more than $1 billion from the government healthcare program Medicare. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald in Los Angeles on Monday ruled that the department had sufficiently alleged UnitedHealth submitted invalid diagnostic data related to the health status of patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. (Raymond, 2/13)
Politico:
Google Paper Stirs Interest, But Not Seen As Transformative
By throwing some of its best engineering and medical minds at vast stores of clinical data with the help of powerful computers running for hundreds of thousands of hours, Google appears to have produced a model that accurately predicts patient deaths, hospital readmissions and other health-related events. The model won't transform medicine. But academics and other technology mavens think the methods described in the paper serve as a prototype for future work in predictive models, in areas like end-of-life care. (Tahir, 2/13)
The New York Times:
Adam Rippon On Quiet Starvation In Men’s Figure Skating
Shortly before Adam Rippon’s breakthrough victory at the United States figure skating championships, Brian Boitano crossed paths with him and asked how he was doing. Boitano, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist, expected Rippon to rave about his jumps or his signature spins. Instead, Boitano said, Rippon pulled back his shoulders, puffed out his chest and proudly proclaimed, “I’ve never been thinner.” (Crouse, 2/13)
The Wall Street Journal:
Is Chocolate A Healthy Choice For Valentine’s Day? That Depends On Which Kind
Valentine’s Day is known for two things: romantic love and chocolate. Romance is famously fickle—it comes and goes. But our love affair with chocolate never seems to wane. Americans spend more today on chocolate products than the gross national product of some of the countries where cacao is grown. The research group Euromonitor International reports that U.S. sales of chocolate went from $14.2 billion in 2007 to $18.9 billion in 2017, a period during which overall sales for candy declined, largely because of growing health concerns over sugar. (Schiffman, 2/13)