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Monday, December 2, 2013

Consumers, Employers Face New Round Of Health Coverage Challenges, Decisions

This news roundup is shared from kaiser.org
The Washington Post: Consumer Tips For Healthcare.gov Show Administration's Cautious Optimism
The Obama administration on Sunday reported vast improvement with the HealthCare.gov health-insurance portal that opened with extensive glitches in October, while acknowledging that the site still needs more work. One sign of ongoing problems came in the form of a blog entry and infographic that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius published on Huffington Post. Both items provide tips for consumers visiting the site, most notably by encouraging them to use it during off-peak hours — mornings, nights and weekends (Hicks, 12/2).
Kaiser Health News: With Three Weeks Left, Consumers Fear They May End Up Without Health Coverage On New Year’s Day
For people in the states with well-functioning insurance websites, such as California, New York and Kentucky, this appears to leave plenty of time. But making the deadline could be dicier for people in Arizona and the 35 other states where the federal website healthcare.gov is the path to coverage, as well as Oregon and Hawaii, which have struggled to get their sites functioning. On Sunday, the government reported progress in improving healthcare.gov, saying the site now allows more than 800,000 visits a day with the rate of timeouts or crashes reduced to below 1 percent. Officials said repairs continue (Rau, 12/2).
And for employers -
The Washington Post: New...
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