Health plan arm of Sentara Healthcare partners with Performance Clinical Systems to address complex needs of Alabama DSRIP Medicaid program.

Virginia Beach, VA (PRWEB) October 21, 2016

Optima Health, a Virginia-based health plan with approximately 450,000 members and 26,000 participating healthcare providers across four states, will be rolling out Symphony, the cloud-based workflow accelerator platform from Performance Clinical Systems, to efficiently manage and document care for Medicaid populations in the Alabama Health Home program. Optima Health, a division of Sentara Healthcare, is a partner in a risk-bearing joint venture in Alabama. Operating as a Regional Care Organization, the company is ready to meet the requirements of Alabama’s shift to a managed Medicaid model under a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services waiver.

Additionally, Optima Health is rolling out Symphony for its diverse populations in government and commercial programs over the coming months in order to be best positioned for the requirements of population health management and risk-based contracting. Through the Symphony platform, the Optima Health care teams can more efficiently manage and engage patients in partnership with its provider network by leveraging a common platform which serves various clinical roles and settings, contract parameters and patient environments, including home health.

Significant efficiencies can be obtained through Symphony’s dynamic documents generated “on the fly”—in the form of assessments, protocols, care plans, etc.— which are regulatory-compliant and based upon patient history and needs together with the clinician-user’s skill set and license level required for each encounter.

“Our partnership with Performance Clinical has enabled us to scale our value-based payment models and population health programs in an incredibly efficient manner,” said Tom Lundquist, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Optima Health. “Critical to our success with populations this size is empowering our provider networks to connect with patients, in coordination with our care teams, in the most timely, compliant and effective manner. Symphony delivers on all fronts” he added.

Symphony maximizes productivity across existing multi-disciplinary teams by allowing each member— RN, LCSW, LPN, MA, etc.— to work at the top of their license, providing greater staffing flexibility and task allocation.

“The new reality is that healthcare organizations are faced with how they can best affect the care for a wider population of patients using existing resources,” commented Chris Johnson, MD, MPH, Performance Clinical’s co-founder and chief scientist. “We designed Symphony to be lightweight for minimally disruptive deployment, extremely adaptable for a myriad of contract requirements and payment models and highly intuitive for all users, which is consistently identified as one of the most attractive benefits of the platform,” he noted.

“Our partnership with Sentara Healthcare and Optima Health continues to demonstrate how simultaneously improving the patient experience while creating efficiencies in care delivery is quickly attainable,” said Brian O’Neill, CEO of Performance Clinical. “Since Symphony is cloud-based, it is easily configured and rapidly optimized for shifting clinical, contractual and organizational requirements."

About Optima Health
Optima Health, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, provides health insurance coverage to approximately 450,000 members. With 30 years of experience in the health insurance arena, Optima Health offers a full suite of commercial products including consumer-directed, employee-owned and employer-sponsored plans, individual health plans, employee assistance programs and plans serving Medicare and Medicaid enrollees. Our provider network features 26,000 providers including specialists, primary care physicians and hospitals. Optima Health offers programs to support members with chronic illnesses, customized wellness programs and integrated clinical and behavioral health services as well as pharmacy management – all to help our members improve their health. Our goal is to provide better health, to be easy to use and offer services that are a great value. To learn more about Optima Health, please visit http://www.optimahealth.com. (1)

About Performance Clinical Systems
Performance Clinical Systems is a privately held healthcare information technology company based in San Francisco, California and Boston, Massachusetts. Founded by two physicians, its cloud-based workflow accelerator platform, Symphony™, efficiently manages patient outreach and encounters across various roles and clinical settings within team-based care models.

Symphony maximizes productivity across existing multi-disciplinary teams by allowing each member to work at the top of their license, providing greater staffing flexibility and task allocation. Additionally, Symphony ensures regulatory-compliant engagement and creates an electronic trail for care and contract compliance reporting.

The company’s solutions are attractive to performance-oriented health care payers and providers because they increase productivity, are quickly embraced by clinicians, can be deployed rapidly and work alongside or as a layer on traditional enterprise HIT systems. Most importantly, Symphony contributes significantly to a provider’s ability to handle shifts in value-based alternative payment models, such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s), Patient-centered Medical Homes (PCMH), Medicare Advantage, DSRIP, LTSS and managed Medicaid, which reward better care at lower cost. For more information, visit http://www.performanceclinical.com.

(1)The membership figure includes total membership in all group and individual insured products, Medicare Managed Care Plans, Medicaid and Famis Plans, and self-funded health plans issued or administered by Optima Health. Total Medical Membership based on Membership History Report, June 2016. Includes members from all Optima Health Licenses, products, Medicare and Medicaid products. Optima Health is the trade name of Optima Health Plan, Optima Health Insurance Company, and Sentara Health Plans, Inc. Optima PPO plans, and Medicare Managed Care Plans are underwritten or administered by Optima Health Insurance Company. Optima Vantage HMO plans, Medicaid, and Famis products are underwritten or administered by Optima Health Plan. Sentara Health Plans provides administrative services to self-funded plans but does not underwrite benefits. Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) are administered by Optima Behavioral Health Services, Inc. Wellness programs are administered by Sentara Health Plans. Source for provider network is Optima Health, Provider Status Report, February 2016. Reported by PRWeb 3 hours ago.

Pulse8’s John Criswell, Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Stratton, Chief Data Scientist and Vice President of Product Analytics, will discuss how plans can leverage alternative data gathering and intervention modalities, and better integrate gap closure initiatives on October 26, 2016 at 8:00 am at the JW Marriott in Washington, DC.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) October 22, 2016

With provider groups assuming progressively more risk and with the proliferation of risk adjustment and quality metrics across all three lines of government business, market forces necessitate increased data sharing among payers and providers. To avoid sinking under all these data demands, risk-bearing entities need to leverage advanced analytics that will coordinate their gap closure efforts to simultaneously address both risk adjustment and quality initiatives. To reduce provider abrasion and alert fatigue, payers also need to collaborate with their network providers on efficient data collection methods.

This session will explore how plans can leverage alternative data gathering and intervention modalities, such as EMR Integration and telehealth, and better integrate gap closure initiatives to more effectively nurture payer-provider collaboration. The speakers will also share the provider engagement and collaboration strategies that are essential to improve quality and fulfill mutually beneficial goals.

About Pulse8
Pulse8 is the only Healthcare Analytics and Technology Company delivering complete visibility into the efficacy of your Risk Adjustment and Quality Management programs. We enable health plans and at-risk providers to achieve the greatest financial impact in the ACA Commercial, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid markets. By combining advanced analytic methodologies with extensive health plan experience, Pulse8 has developed a suite of uniquely pragmatic solutions that are revolutionizing risk adjustment and quality. Pulse8’s flexible business intelligence tools offer real-time visibility into member and provider activities so our clients can apply the most cost-effective and appropriate interventions for closing gaps in documentation, coding, and quality. For more company information, please contact Scott Filiault at (732) 570-9095, visit us at http://www.Pulse8.com, or follow us on Twitter @Pulse8News.

About America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)
AHIP is the national trade association representing the health insurance community. AHIP’s members provide health and supplemental benefits through employer-sponsored coverage, the individual insurance market, and public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. AHIP advocates for public policies that expand access to affordable health care coverage to all Americans through a competitive marketplace that fosters choice, quality, and innovation. To learn more about AHIP, visit us online: https://www.ahip.org/. Reported by PRWeb 21 hours ago.

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” *? Lysander Spooner*

*We all know the BLS artificially suppresses the CPI through bullshit substitution adjustments, quality adjustments, and various other incomprehensible hedonic adjustments made by government apparatchiks at the behest of their politician bosses.* Some obscure theoretical academic  calculation called owners equivalent rent accounts for almost a quarter of the CPI weighting.

It has no relation to reality as it has increased by only 12% since 2012, while the Case Shiller Housing Price Index is up 52% over the same time frame. The median price of existing home sales is up 30% over the same time frame. It also has no relation to rent increases, as they have gone up 22% nationally since 2012. It’s essentially a made up number by goal seeking bureaucrats doing the bidding of their establishment masters.

*Prior to Greenspan and his cronies getting their grubby little non-callused academic hands on it in the 1980s, CPI reflected measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living, as measured by a fixed-basket of goods.* The purpose of all these adjustments and calculations has been to systematically repress the reported level of inflation as a way to keep the Social Security system solvent, allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates falsely lower for their banking cartel owners and the biggest debtor on the planet – the U.S. government, and to conceal from the average American how far their standard of living has fallen. It ain’t working.

The average household might not know real median household income is at the same level it was in 1989, but they know they are treading water on a daily basis – using credit cards to sustain themselves while paying 15% interest to the Wall Street banking cartel.

*They know their wages are stagnant and their every day costs relentlessly rise. *Real hourly wages, using the fake CPI, are up just 1.4% in the past year. In reality, using an accurate measure of inflation, real wages are falling. The government can tell them inflation is only up 1.5% in the last year, but they know better. Their real everyday inflation is north of 4%, as measured before the 1990 coverup began. Now, even the BLS is starting to lose control of the narrative of no inflation.

*Even the suppressed, manipulated, massaged and adjusted CPI has gone up at an annualized 3% rate over the last two months. *Core inflation, which the Fed supposedly basis their interest rate decisions upon, has run at 2.2% over the last year, and has exceeded the Fed’s 2% mandate for 11 straight months. As you can see in the chart above, medical care costs are skyrocketing due to the disastrous Obamacare train wreck. Medical-care prices are up 4.9% in the past year, including a 7% jump in prescription-drug prices (a 24-year high). Medical care commodities are up 5.2% and poised to go higher.

Obama declared to the American people his Obamacare plan would cut the annual average household insurance premiums by $2,500.* This bald faced lie by the slimy snake is revealed in the chart below showing health insurance CPI is up 29% since Obamacare was rammed down our throats.* Of course these fake BLS figures drastically underestimate the true increases, as most hard working families have seen their premiums rise in excess of 100%, with deductibles increasing by 500%. Close enough for government drones. But, at least they got to keep their doctor. Right?

*But the fun has just begun. *As Obama takes his victory lap, his prized piece of legislation is collapsing under the weight of government incompetence, outrageously high costs, lack of choice, and not enough young fools willing to pay through the nose for the benefit of lazy, obese, free shit army members. If you thought the 5% medical cost inflation was bad, how about 25%? That will be the average increase for Obamacare plans come November, with 9 states having rates growing by 40% or more.

The BLS not only under-reports actual medical cost inflation but under-weights it in their CPI calculation. It’s almost laughable they give it only an 8.5% weighting, when it accounts for at least 15% of the average household’s expenses. Nothing reported by the government or bloviated by a corrupt politician can be believed. I was reminded of an Obama whopper during the debate this week when Hillary declared her ridiculous economic plan wouldn’t add a cent to the national debt.

*As he was doing his best snake oil salesman routine in 2009, Obama promised Americans his government controlled health insurance plan wouldn’t add one dime to the national debt. He was right. *According to the CBO, it will add 14 trillion dimes ($1.4 trillion) to the national debt over the next ten years. How naive and mathematically inept does one have to be to believe these sleazy power hungry control freaks? Evidently more than half the willfully ignorant populace will believe anything they are told to believe. *Dumber Together*.

*This brings us to rent, which has taken off like an Elon Musk government subsidized rocket ship, due to the Fed and Wall Street’s collusion in turning foreclosures into a windfall of rental income for connected Wall Street hedge funds.* The purposeful limiting of foreclosure housing supply has driven prices to such astronomical heights, first time home buyers have been completely priced out of the market. Wall Street scam artists gleefully rent out the vacant houses to the people they kicked out of those houses. This has driven up the demand for rental units, resulting in rents jumping by 4% to 8% annually across the land and especially in major metropolitan centers.

*What is again laughable is how the BLS weights rental housing versus owned housing.* The U.S. home ownership rate of 62.9% is the lowest rate in over 50 years. So much for Bush’s ownership society. If the percentage of people renting is the highest in 50 years and owning lowest in 50 years, why would the BLS only weight rent at 7.7% of CPI and owners equivalent rent at 24.2%? Again they are purposely under-weighting an expense that is rising at a far greater rate than their beloved 2% goal.

*Lastly, we get to the expense which is about to go vertical and give the old CPI calculation a drastic boost upwards.* Yellen and her cronies have been riding the low oil price gravy train for the last 18 months, giving them cover to not raise rates because inflation was below their fake propaganda goal of 2%. The plunge in oil prices from $100 a barrel in August 2014 to below $30 a barrel in February of this year gave the Fed another excuse to delay increasing rates so their Wall Street owners could continue to feed at the trough of national wealth like never satisfied bloated hogs.

The year over year oil and gasoline decreases of 6% to 10% which have been suppressing the CPI calculation are about to turn into 10% to 60% year over year increases for the next six months, unless oil prices plunge again. Gasoline prices are already up 30% from the February lows. Transportation costs account for over 15% of the CPI calculation. Household fuel and utilities account for 5% of the calculation. In case you have forgotten, a major cost of food is transporting it to grocery stores. These year over year increases in energy costs will reverberate throughout the economy.

*The official manipulated, massaged, seasonally adjusted and suppressed CPI is going to rocket above 2% into the 3% to 4% range.* Janet and her cronies are already working on a dozen new excuses about these increases being transitory and not a reason to increase rates. I’m sure some new global crisis will arise, forcing Janet to delay again as instructed by her establishment masters. But they assure us the economy is growing, employment is booming and all is well.

*In the real world where the deplorables live*, senior citizens are going to get a $4 annual increase in their Social Security payments in 2017 (somehow the government gets away with a 0.3% increase when their own numbers show a 1.5% increase), while Janet allows them to earn .15% in their money market accounts. In addition, their medical cost inflation is exceeding 10%. Two of the largest expenses for a senior citizen are rent and medical costs. Maybe this is the equivalent of the Obamacare death panels. I guess granny will have to decide between her heart medicine and Ramen noodles with a side of Friskies for dinner.

*With real wages stagnant below 1.5%, rising energy costs, soaring medical costs due to Obamacare, record high home prices and rent expense due to the Fed, the average new car price at a record $34,000, and food prices rising steadily, the standard of living of the irredeemables continues to plunge. But at least our taxes will be going up if Hillary and the establishment have sufficiently rigged the election to insure her victory. Sit back and enjoy our journey to third world status.* Reported by Zero Hedge 8 hours ago.

Submitted by Jan Skoyles via GoldCore.com,

-*Introduction *-

Cash is the new “barbarous relic” according to many central banks, regulators, and some economists and there is a strong, concerted push for the ‘cashless society’.

Developments in recent days and weeks have highlighted the risks posed by the war on cash and the cashless society.

The *Presidential campaign* has been dominated for months and again this week by the power of information that has been gathered through unconventional means – whether due to email hacks, leaked microphone tapes or even late-night twitter rants.

Both presidential candidates have got things to say when it comes to the gathering of information and both are for it. *Hillary Clinton* sees a thin line between national security and your personal privacy. *Donald Trump* has openly said that he is open to mass surveillance and as he puts it, putting the country before personal liberty.

Neither candidate is afraid to say that they support information snooping and gathering for the sake of national security. In the ‘punch and judy’ show that has been the U.S. election, important financial and economic matters have been eschewed in favour of salacious allegations regarding alleged sexual advances etc.

Access to your information is one thing, it is how it is read and what is done with it that is pertinent. In a cashless society information replaces cash. How that information is interpreted is entirely subjective and the chances of any recourse when someone has misread your cash transaction seem to be increasingly slim.

This information gives more power to unaccountable banks and corporations. It removes power and liberty from individuals and small to medium enterprises.

Opinion is divided among economists and there are many economists who share our concerns about the risks of the cashless society.

One such economist is *Doctor Constantin Gurdgiev*.  Dr. Gurdgiev is the Professor of Finance (Visiting) at Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. He was previously Adjunct Professor of Finance with Trinity College, Dublin, worked as editor of Ireland’s Business and Finance magazine and was a non-executive member of the Investment Committees of GoldCore. Here is his view regarding the risks of a cashless society:



“Central banks, Governments and regulatory authorities are too often keen to highlight the benefits of the cashless society, e.g. efficiency and speed of transactions, ease of compliance and reporting, etc. However, the same agencies promoting cashless society evolution never mention the downsides or costs associated with creating a market structure in which private transactions become fully public through electronic trace-ability and centralised storage of information.

 

In most basic terms, cashless society removes anonymity of using cash in private transactions, such as gifts, small transfers and small private payments in transactions not involving use of public resources, e.g. tips. Other key drawbacks of cashless payments systems is that they de facto undermine the key role of money as a store of value. Electronic accounts can and will be bailed in (expropriated) by the Governments.

 

Cash and monetary assets, such as gold, cannot be expropriated or bailed-in as long as they are held in physical form and under proper storage. Cashless accounts amplify the importance of monetary assets, such as gold, in fulfilling the function of being safe havens against systemic risks – risks that are associated with high probability of Government expropriation.

 

Finally, cashless / electronic accounts represent a significant, and ever expanding in scope and size threat of cyber attacks and cyber crime. Here too, monetary assets, such as physical gold, offer both hedge and a safe haven opportunities to protect wealth.

 

Governments’ push toward electronic accounts and transactions is ultimately driven by the desire of the modern States to exert maximum control over private wealth and incomes. The only forms of protection against such policies that individual investors and savers have today are gold, silver and platinum held as a part of well-diversified and legally protected portfolios.”



-*How Close Are We To the Cashless Society?*-

There is little denying it, we are edging closer and closer every year. Here are some key facts

· In the *UK* over half of all payments in 2015 were cashless
· Many* EU* countries have capped the amount that can be legally paid in cash
· In *India* a radio address from Prime Minister Modhi urged citizens to stop using cash
· In *Kenya* about a quarter of it’s GNP is through mobile payments app M-Pesa
· In the *U.S.* the economist Kenneth Rogoff’s latest book ‘The Curse of Cash’ has put the quest to reduce cash firmly on the agenda of many central banks and governments.

Why the sudden strive to eliminate coins and more importantly paper money or cash? Is it environmental? Of course not. There environmental benefit of eliminating cash use is absolutely minimal.Rather, it is to do with government control and distrust of markets and individual freedom and it is to do with uber Keynesian economics and corporatism which supports banks and large corporations at the expense of the individuals, small and medium size enterprises and the wider society.

However, it is presented under the guise of efficiencies and crime-fighting. Central bankers and governments state a cashless society, or even just currency controls, will help to drive out criminal activity, money laundering and tax evasion, all whilst saving the economy time and money.

But really, as you’ll see, there’s little real benefit to society in reducing the physical cash we have available. Aside from the cash management and cyber security aspect, you need to ask what’s in it for the banks and governments and to also consider how it’s dangerous and creates unappreciated risks when you don’t get to choose how you spend and hold your wealth.

-*How is the cashless society coming about?*-

Right now a number of governments, fintech entrepreneurs and economists have declared that we should move to a cashless society. Being told how we can spend our money is always an emotive topic, but now that going cashless is actually happening in the background of a struggling financial system, it is proving to be a real threat to our very sovereignty and freedom.

Cashless has been legitimised in the minds of the electorate by the rise of the trendy industry of ‘fintech’, an industry that I am normally proud to be associated with. Like all new technological movements the intention is to improve systems, economies and the standard of living, but at the same time they can be misused, creating suspicion and undesirable consequences.

New technology that changes the status quo is something that will always be met with some resistance and a belief that more harm than good will come from it.

In 1858 people said the transatlantic telegraph was ‘too fast for the truth.’ In 1904 The Times accused the telephone of creating a ‘race of left-eared people—that is, of people who hear better with the left than with the right ear’! In 1994 the same paper asked if the internet had been ‘overhyped’.

Prior to fintech, which has expanded the means in which we can spend money day-to-day, it was not practical (either physically or financially) to suggest society no longer use physical cash when spending. But in a world seeking financial efficiencies and where there are officially more mobile devices in the world than people, it is not surprising that there are devices and apps to make your money easier to manage, spend and invest popping up throughout the world.

The cashless society is unlikely to become an official thing i.e. cash is unlikely to be suddenly outlawed overnight. More likely, is that cash will be made so inconvenient that people will first live with less cash. But slowly but surely we may find ourselves (and the societies we live in) cashless – like a frog in a pot of cold water slowly coming to the boil.

-*Efficient to be cashless?*-

Like all technological developments, we are encouraged to adopt them as it will vastly improve our lives/save money/protect our grandchildren/cure cancer etc. So, is this the case with going cashless?

Cash does obviously cost money. In 2015 the Danish government ruled that businesses were no longer obligated to accept cash payments. The ‘aim’ was to reduce costs of managing and securing money whilst on the premises.  Whether you assess the time you spend waiting at the ATM, the cost of transporting the money between banks and businesses or even the cost to count it.

According to a 2014 study commissioned by PayPal the cost of cash, in terms of counting and depositing, to small businesses in the UK, is £2.5 billion per year and about a fortnight in terms of time lost.

And we’re already savvy to the efficiencies of going cashless as it is estimated that there is approximately £800m in lost sales due to businesses not accepting cards.

But do these efficiencies stack up against the true cost of going cashless?

-*Crime prevention*-

One of the many arguments for going cashless is that the removal of cash from society will help to prevent criminal activity and money laundering. According to Europol ‘the use of cash is the main reason triggering suspicious transaction reports, accounting for more than 30% of all reports.’

Money laundering is big deal. According to Diane Francis, between 2002 and 2011, ‘some $880.96 billion was spirited out of Russia, $461.86 billion left Mexico, $370.38 billion left Malaysia, $343.93 billion left India, $266.43 billion left Saudi Arabia, and $192.69 billion left Brazil. The total outflow, among 20 emerging economies, was $5.9 trillion, equivalent to $49 billion a month.’

Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks France’s Finance Minister Michel Sapin declared war on cash, placing the terrorists’ ability to buy dangerous goods with cash as one of the main reasons for the murders. There is now a €1000 cap on cash payments, down from €3000 previously.

But it’s not just money-laundering thanks to big drugs cartels (as facilitated by some banks) or terrorism that is a risk when dealing with financial crime. Going cashless is a concern for individuals who will be forced to use cards as a means of payment, a growing target for cybercriminals.

Some rightly believe that the concerted push by banks to end the use of cash is to boost profits.

In ‘Card on the Table’ Bjorn Eriksson presents the move to a cashless society as a moneymaking move by the banks who are benefitting from the low incident of bank robberies, whilst their client details are hacked by cybercriminals.

In 2015 the UK contributed 43% of the total card losses seen across Europe. Losses through card fraud totalled £88.5 million, attributed to the ‘growth in online spend and the digital revolution’ . Credit card fraud and attacks on food and beverage transactions climbed by 116% (yoy) in the last quarter, according to the Global Fraud Attack Index.

This can happen in a number of ways: skimming, when your card is physically scanned by the thief; if your card is contactless enabled then a close-range scanning device will do the trick; and, do you think you’re so techie because you pay on your mobile? Well, look out for the near-field communication (NFC) devices that are an easy target to hack by criminals.

It’s not only a money-making move by banks. The nascent cyber security industry will also hugely benefit. Cybercrime will benefit the Fraud Detection and Prevention market which is estimated to grow from $14.36 bn in 2016 to $33.19 bn by 2021. Within this, the retail sector is the highest growing area, i.e. you and I using our innovative cashless payments as a way to spend, spend, spend.

Yet as much as economists and governments would like to blame cash-based money-laundering as a reason to go cashless, in the UK it is not as big a problem as cyber money laundering. The Treasury and Home Office believe that they ‘know about most cash-based money laundering’ but the big problem lies in ‘high-end’ money laundering, such as from bank accounts:

“The size and complexity of the UK financial sector means it is more exposed to criminality than financial sectors in many other countries, including abuse enabled by professional enablers in the legal and accountancy sector.” It is here that the intelligence agencies see ‘significant gaps’ in their knowledge.

The digital sector is by no means more secure for the average citizen and, if anything, puts your money more at risk of criminal activity than previously.

In April 2016, SWIFT — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication – the vital global financial network that western and most international financial services companies, institutions and banks use for all payments and transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers that it was aware of cyber fraud and a number of recent “cyber incidents” where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system and $81 million was stolen from a central bank.

SWIFT acknowledged that it wasn’t just the $81 million stolen from Bangladesh’s central bank that alerted them to cybersecurity issues, these attacks have been attempted on several other institutions as well. SWIFT acknowledged that the cyber-attack on the New York Federal Reserve Bank was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global payments platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions and all of us.

This in itself shows the vulnerability of our modern online and digital international payments system.

-*Banks and governments will try force you to be cashless** *-

And how are we being persuaded to ‘go cashless’? Not by whipping out the debit card, but instead through our mobiles. There is no doubt that the ability to turn mobile phones into both your bank branch and your wallet will empower a huge number of people but this does not mean it is safer than carrying cash. There was a three-fold increase in mobile malware in the last year, according to the FT, as hackers target mobile-banking applications and payment apps.

In *Sweden*, the bastion of the cashless society, banks have done such a great job in making cash appear so suspicious that:

“In general, the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is: ‘If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong,’” writes Mikael Krogerus for Credit Suisse. Arvidsson explains that “At the offices which do handle banknotes and coins, the customer must explain where the cash comes from, according to the regulations aimed at money laundering and terrorist financing,” The hassle, for the depositor, is enough to make them go cashless.

Surely the risks of holding cash are for you, the individual, to manage. And the risks of criminal activity, if facilitated by cash or even diamonds, is for the police to manage. Why are the two conflated?

-*How much does cash matter?*-

Despite the joy of spending on a mobile app or whipping your contactless card out to pay for public transport, the attachment to cash in society, even if it is becoming decreasingly obvious each day, has been under appreciated.

According to David Wolman, author of The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers—and the Coming Cashless Society, those of us who have access to both physical cash and the electronic banking system truly believe that having some cash is a good thing.

The demand for cash is still very real. Whilst cash transactions might be falling the demand for banknotes is climbing. The Telegraph reports, ‘the demand for banknotes has risen faster than the total amount of spending in the economy, a trend that has only become more pronounced since the mid-1990s.’  and in the last decade the number of ATMs has increased by 20%, in the UK.

In the UK, the Bank of England found that 18% of people hoard cash mainly “to provide comfort against potential emergencies”. Around £3bn- £5bn is thought to be being “hoarded” or prudently saved to be less pejorative.

This cash is under the proverbial “mattress” meaning hidden in a safe place in a house – possibly a home safe or up in the attic. Burglars rarely go up in the attic. Alternatively the cash is stored in safety deposit boxes or in vaults.

The world’s largest insurance company, Munich Re, has opted to store some of their cash reserves in vaults – and a little bit of gold for good measure. Indeed, even banks including Commerzbank in Germany are considering holding actual bank notes in their vaults again.

As interest rates turn negative and the risk of bail-ins grows closer by the day, holding cash appears increasingly attractive

As calls to remove high denomination bills from circulation sweep across both Europe and the US, two Swiss politicians have called for the opposite to happen.

Philip Brunner and Manuel Brandberg are asking for the creation of a 5,000 Swiss franc note, in order to protect both the currency and the liberty of the citizens. In their motion to parliament they argue that “cash is comparable to the service firearm kept by Swiss citizen soldiers.” Indeed the pair go as far as to argue that they both “guarantee freedom”.

Guarantee might be a strong word in this regard but most would accept that they protect personal privacy, property rights and by extension our freedom. Totalitarian regimes of all colours and especially communist regimes are quick to confiscate wealth, including gold and property.

Chairman Mao confiscated gold and then banned gold ownership in China. In Stalin’s Russia, merely owning gold coins or bars would result in being sent to jail or worse the Gulag. We digress but you get the point.

Interestingly in Sweden, the first country that will seemingly go completely cashless, sees only 40-60% of its circulating cash in regular circulation with the remainder believed to be being saved by citizens outside the banking system – “under the mattress”, in home safes and in safety deposit boxes.

In Germany 79% of transactions are cash based, also for liberty reasons. As the WSJ reported, ‘Germany’s love of cash is driven largely by its anonymity. One legacy of the Nazis and East Germany’s Stasi secret police is a fear of government snooping, and many Germans are spooked by proposals of banning cash transactions that exceed €5,000. Many Germans think the ECB’s plan to phase out the €500 bill is only the beginning of getting rid of cash altogether.’

Even in Sweden there is still an appreciation for holding cash. Niklas Arvidsson points to a survey he recently carried out where he found that ‘two-thirds of Swedes think carrying cash is a human-right’.

The problem is, if the government and banks are able to push through an infrastructure that doesn’t support cash then it doesn’t really matter what people think. If their cash is suddenly null and void then their concerns about human rights have become a bigger matter entirely.

-*What’s it all for then?*-

In Niklas Arvidsson’s study ‘The Cashless Society’ he states that security and efficiency is the external sales pitch from banks, as it allows banks to ‘avoid complex cash handling and eliminate bank robberies, theft, and dirty money.’ However internally it helps with their main target: individual clients. The fully digitised payment system gives the bank a wealth of information about their clients in terms of what they spend, what they buy, when they shop etc. For advertising purposes this is effectively free market research.

Big data is now very bug business indeed. If the data is used for market research, who else can take advantage of knowing what you’re spending your money on? Even if you live in a politically stable country, with ethical laws you’re still at risk of losing out – that car boot sale you did at the weekend? Get ready for the taxman to benefit. That cheeky McDonalds you had last week? Get ready for your health insurance provider to put up your premium.

Never mind those who still enjoy the occasional cigarette and cigar of God forbid a few glasses of wine of an evening or a few drinks down the local boozer!

It seems logical and quite obvious to most that one of the primary reasons that some central banks are striving for a cashless society is to pave the way for deepening negative interest rates. Once all of your money is in the digital banking system you can get ready for it to be frozen, taken to fund a bail-in and even taxed. And in the meantime, enjoy governments, banks and possibly large corporations knowing what you’re spending your money on.

-*Negative interest rates*-

Negative interest rates are seemingly accepted as a way to preserve capital in a banking system. Ostensibly, they are put in place to prevent destabilising movements of money at times of financial crisis and to encourage spending and investment.

Negative interest rates in the UK seem to be an ever-present threat that no-one really believes will happen. But it is very real in the global economy, according to the WSJ, more than a fifth of global GDP is produced in countries with negative interest rates imposed by central banks.

Since 2012, seven countries have experimented with negative interest rates: Hungary being the most recent, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Bulgaria and of course, Japan. Not all of them have hit depositors, yet. However this does not mean that customers are ready to be charged for lending their money to a bank.

Negative rates are there in part to stimulate spending, but the more negative the nominal rate the greater the chance cash will be hoarded and resulting in a reduced velocity of money. But, how much impact can negative interest rates have when savers and depositors can escape the NIRP environment?

As the Financial Times wrote last month, “As long as people have access to cash, they may be able to avoid negative interest rates, limiting the scope for central banks to cut interest rates much further.”

But, in a cashless society if banks decide to impose negative interest rates account holders will not be able to access their money and this is hugely advantageous, to the banks. When a bank gets into difficulty, a cashless society helps protect the bank from a bank run. However, as negative interest rates become widespread and the risk of bail-ins more widely appreciated, we will likely see even more runs of the banks and the scene of ATM queues around the block.

However if cash is no long common in society how will depositors be able to protect their money? They won’t.

This is common thinking; in a recent report by the ICMB entitled, ‘What else can Central Banks Do?’ ‘If cash ceases to exist, so there is no riskless [sic] asset with a zero nominal return, central banks can make nominal interest rates as negative as needed to spur recoveries from recessions.

At present, with cash flowing around the economy there is a ‘lower bound’ in terms of how low negative rates can be. This zero lower bound issue is quite the problem, with even Benoît Cœuré,  Member of the Executive Board of the ECB suggesting banks either tax physical cash or ban it altogether.

But this can be solved by going cashless, according to the ICMB, “If cash did not exist, there would be no lower bound, and policymakers facing an economic downturn could make rates as negative as needed …” The ICMB thinks this latest monetary experiment would “spur a strong and rapid recovery.”

That’s what the central banks believed quantitative easing (QE) would do. It hasn’t.

This is a scenario that is likely to become reality in the near future. A year ago Credit Suisse analyst Christel Aranda-Hassel told investors, “Crucially, we also expect the ECB to remove the lower bound, leaving the door open to go more negative if needed …”

For *Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank,* it is a no-brainer:



*‘Going cashless would hence allow for greater macroeconomic stability, as well as lower inflation targets, than when monetary policy is at risk of being constrained by the lower bound.’*



But, he states it is important that you don’t realise that you soon won’t be able to use cash:

“It would be fatal if citizens got the impression that cash is being gradually taken away from them.” Imagine.

So far negative interest rates haven’t significantly spurned a huge spending increase in the countries that have implemented them. Implementing cash controls, or banning it altogether, it is hoped, will soon see to this. At the moment, cash remains ever present in these NIRP economies.

Another possible motivation for wanting to ban cash, is the belief that it could spur consumer spending.  According to some research, we are more likely to spend when it is not cash that we are using.

Economic and Psychology Professors Drazen Prelec and George Loewenstein have written about ‘coupling’ to describe how much we link a consumption and payment experience. They find that there is strong coupling when there is physical cash payment, as opposed to on a credit or debit card. On the latter two options the coupling sensation is less strong, an unsurprising finding given that “credit card financing seems to be a stimulus to spending.”

-*Cash doesn’t have to be ‘cash’ – Return to gold and silver? Rise of ‘crypto’*-

We are in a fun place now with cash, a situation that is echoing the warning of Alan Greenspan, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through monetary inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.”

Soon, if the central bankers have their way, it will be cash that will be possibly illegal to hold.

At the moment we know cash to be coins and notes but what we really understand it to be is a medium of exchange that can be used in an almost decentralised manner. It doesn’t have to go through any kind of intermediary in order for the shop keeper to accept it as payment for my chocolate bar.

So in a cashless society where there are negative interest rates, ‘cash’ or the medium of exchange will just be something else, and I suspect that will involve gold and silver and possibly cryptocurrency – especially a blockchain-based digital currency.

The idea that negative interest rates will work because of a cashless society is something that will have to be rethought. Rogoff himself agrees that gold will become more popular and rise in price, as the cashless society grows. He uses India as an example of a country that has been through multiple economic traumas  and yet gold remains king, not cash.

The same is true in China and much of the Asian world.

-*Can you avoid it and how do you manage it?*-

I don’t believe you will be able to completely avoid the cashless (or even less-cash) society in your day to day life in the coming years.

This summer, I traveled to eight different European countries. For none of them did I withdraw cash before I went, as I perhaps would have done a few years ago. In every one of those countries I was able to use contactless payments, payment apps and even UBER in a couple of them.

Whilst cash still accounts for 85% of all transactions across the globe according to a MasterCard survey, more developed economics and indeed more debt and credit based economies are going through a cash-purge as well as negative interest rates.

The cashless society tries to force us to keep money and our savings in bank accounts. But what can happen when all of your money is in a bank account, aside from negative interest rates? See Cyprus for bail-ins, Greece for capital controls, deposit and ATM withdrawal limits etc., Argentina for the nationalisation of approximately $30 billion in private pensions (2008), and Venezuela’s own limits on card withdrawals and spending.

The threat of banks charging negative interest rates on customer deposits in a cashless society makes the proverbial stashing cash under the mattress more attractive.  Indeed, it becomes more attractive to even the most trusting and sophisticated investor and saver and indeed to companies and institutions.

Whilst you cannot avoid the day-to-day cashless issue you can protect yourself from the cashless society through a diversified portfolio that includes gold and silver – some in your possession and for larger amounts, bullion coins and bars in allocated and segregated storage in the safest vaults in the world.

The problem is thus, monetary policy ‘solutions’ remain a double edged sword. On one hand the push to go cashless looks concerning, but we are reassured that this may be gradual and take time as social inclusion and security issues take hold, but on the other hand banks will likely continue to raise the inflation target as their preferred use of monetary policy.

*In this environment, buying gold is rational behaviour to even the biggest paper-bugs out there.* The current monetary experiment of massive QE is no longer the main concern of prudent investors and institutions, it is now combined with negative interest rates and bail-ins. Many are hedging these risks with gold. We have previously reported how some of the wealthiest people in the world are diversifying into gold as seen in gold buying by Lord Rothschild and billionaire investors such as Rogers, Faber, Singer, Dalio, Bass, Einhorn, Odey, Druckenmiller, Paulson and Gross.

And it’s not just individuals, GoldCore reported in March of this year, the world’s second largest reinsurer, Munich Re is stashing both gold and cash as it prepares itself for negative interest rates. And other institutions of note such as the world’s largest asset manager Blackrock Inc. and the increasingly powerful People’s Bank of China, are preparing themselves for a world of negative interest rates by diversifying their balance sheets and foreign exchange reserves into gold.

Proponents of the cashless society claim that this will reduce criminal activity, including money laundering. However, financial criminal activity is not put to bed by making society cashless. In an age of cyber warfare when banks have already been shown to be vulnerable to hacking, we suggest that financial institutions and their clients’ accounts will be more at risk should paper cash cease to exist. This is something that we will explore more in relation to digital security, gold and money.

Like everything with money, going cashless should be the choice of the individual, company or institution. With many financial institutions determined to force us all to use digital fiat currencies in a fragile banking system, holding gold and silver bullion as a means of protecting your privacy, as well as your wealth, is becoming more important.

-*Conclusion by Mark O’Byrne and Jan Skoyles*-

The risks of the cashless society were brought home to us this week when *RBS* *bank in the UK* decided it would just go ahead and shut-down the bank accounts of news channel Russia Today (RT). They did this with no prior warning and did not even feel the need to give a legitimate reason.

In the UK, as across most of the world, a business is required to have a bank account, and business accounts are expected to hold a minimum amount on deposit. With this in mind, you can see how easy it is for a bank or a government to just ‘switch off’ your business if they don’t like the nature of your business, what jurisdictions you operate in, who the principles are, who you are partners with or indeed what you say. This is made even more likely if a new president, prime minister or other government official, declares that this is a matter of *national security*.

If governments allow banks to shut down bank accounts of individuals or companies without a fair trial and *due legal process*, it will create a very dangerous situation indeed.

*‘Econgularity’* (h/t Scott A.Shay)  is a word to describe the ‘moment in time when our current technological snooping prowess, the ease of big data manipulation and our sprint to a cashless economy will converge.’ The econgulairty will ‘happen in such a way as to permit governments to exercise incredibly powerful control over all human behavior.’

The singularity is defined as the point in which technology advances will “radically change human civilization and perhaps even human nature itself.” The move to a cashless society could mean that human nature may well be affected. The human desire (and a *human right* as the Swedish would argue) to hold cash and assets out of the banking system may be suppressed thanks to claims that cash is bad and only used by criminals.

However, we do not believe that we are heading towards a *1984* existence where every decision you make through monetary means is recorded, analysed and used against you. No, common sense and wisdom will hopefully prevail and we will pull back from the brink. People will realise the risks involved and decide that we are not going to tolerate this. We will not allow ourselves to be dependents or victims of a cashless state.

Why build societies which have a scarcity, mono-culture and a complete lack of cash? Much better and safer to opt for abundant bountiful societies with a *healthy market and ecosystem with a variety of means of exchange and stores of value*. Do we want to live in a society like repressed society like say *North Korea* or an abundant free society and economy like say *Switzerland*?

A ban on cash does not remove the issues that the proponents claim it will, instead it exacerbates the issues that already exist and bring them to the forefront of every prudent saver and investors’ mind: liberty, security of assets, protection of wealth against *negative interest rates*, *bail-ins* and *currency devaluations*.

The current drive towards a cashless society shows the importance of being diversified and not having all your savings and assets within the vulnerable financial and banking system.

It underlines the importance of *diversification* and having direct ownership of some of your wealth – outside the electronic savings and payments systems. Reported by Zero Hedge 10 hours ago.

You SHOULD shop around, ask questions and assess a plan's deductible and out-of-pocket costs as well as the premium.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Reported by Delawareonline 8 hours ago.

The federal-state program for low-income people has been scarcely debated in the turbulent presidential election, but it faces real consequences depending on who wins the White House in the Nov. 8 vote. Under President Barack Obama, Medicaid has expanded to cover more than 70 million people and shed much of the social stigma from its earlier years as a welfare program. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would keep that going, trying to persuade 19 holdout states to accept the Medicaid expansion in Obama's health law. The expansion has added millions of low-income adults to the program, including many workers whose jobs don't offer health insurance. Sixty-two percent said the federal government should continue to guarantee coverage for low-income people, and only about one-third favored block grants, the Trump approach. A large majority of Medicaid recipients are in private managed-care plans, which are trying to reduce patients' use of the emergency room for routine care. —Republican-led states that expanded Medicaid have gotten concessions from the Obama administration on issues such as charging modest premiums to beneficiaries and using copays to discourage emergency room visits for routine care. "Republican governors and legislatures unwilling to do the expansion under strict terms would be willing to do it under more favorable conditions," said Jim Capretta, a health care policy expert at the business-oriented American Enterprise Institute. Reported by SeattlePI.com 21 hours ago.

Every year, thousands take to their cars to explore the United States. In the excitement, no one wants to think about getting into an accident. Yet unfortunately, anytime you get on the road, there's a chance you can get into one. If you are going on an extensive road trip, you are going to want to know how to handle your car insurance to ensure a car accident won't ruin your whole trip or finances.

*Car Insurance if You Are Taking Your Own Car*

There are two things you should know about car insurance when road tripping with your own car: who's covered and what happens if you get into an accident in another state?

In terms of who is covered, car insurance policies allow other people to drive your car (unless they are unlicensed, drunk, or specified as excluded from your policy). So if your friend was behind the wheel and he crashes, your policy will be the primary source of coverage for everyone involved in the accident-- including the other driver. If your policy is exhausted, then your friend's policy is next to be used, if he has one. Any car damage your friend may cause to another driver would most likely be covered by your insurance as well. If anyone is injured, your passengers and the other drivers may want to tap into the medical part of your insurance as well, but may feel more comfortable going through their own health provider first.

When you crash in another state, that state will likely have different auto insurance requirements than your home. For example, if you have car insurance in California, which only requires $15,000/$30,000 of bodily injury liability and $5,000 of property damage liability, and get into an accident in New York, where minimums are about much higher, you would be very underinsured to cover a New York driver's damages.

Luckily, car insurance companies recognize you shouldn't be penalized for having the legal limit in one state, and crashing in another with higher limits. Thus, so long as you were not intoxicated or conducting any other policy disqualifying behavior, your company will bump your limits up to the state's in which you crashed. This also applies if you crash north of the border in Canada. It does not apply in Mexico however, which we talk more about below.

*
Car Insurance if You are Renting a Car*

Rental cars come with their own form of insurance. A rental car insurance policy comes in four parts. You do not have to buy all four, but it's recommended you get at least one. The first, and most recommended to buy, is a Loss Damage Waiver (LDW). You pay for the LDW, about $9 to $20 per day, which essentially says the rental company will cover any damage that happens to the car. If you have collision insurance on your policy however, you may use that in place of the LDW. Not purchasing the LDW will leave you on the hook for any damage that happens to the car, which can be thousands of dollars depending on the accident. If you have a credit card as well, you may charge the entire rental to the card, and your card provider will actually cover the LDW at no charge to you. Ultimately, paying for the LDW or using a credit card may be a good way to go. If you do get into an accident, you won't have to file a claim with your insurance company, thus risking your rates going up.

Next is Supplemental Liability Coverage (SLC) which is mandatory if you do not have car insurance. If you do have car insurance, you do not need to pay for SLC. Although, if you have low limits like the state minimum, going with SLC may be a smart move. SLC will cover you up to a million dollars.

You don't really need to have the final two parts - Personal Accident Insurance (PAI) and Personal Effects Coverage (PEC). PAI is redundant if you have PIP and/or health insurance. PEC, which insures items if they are stolen from the rental car, is highly restrictive in what it qualifies for coverage. Ultimately it is not worth the price in most cases.

*What if You are Driving to Mexico?*

Your American car insurance will no longer be valid when you enter Mexico. You will have to buy Mexican car insurance. Mexico has strict car insurance laws, if you are caught without a valid insurance policy, you can face jail time and other consequences. Fortunately, buying Mexican car insurance is actually quite simple.

Both GEICO and Progressive allow people to purchase a policy on their websites through one of their partners. Plans come in daily, 6-month and year long policies. We found the 6-month is usually the best deal, costing around $300 to $400, so remember to account for that expense when calculating the cost of a Mexican road trip.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 14 hours ago.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois will be the only insurer offering PPO health insurance plans on the state's Obamacare exchange next year, according to information released Friday by the state Department of Insurance.

That's down from five insurers that offered individual PPO plans on the... Reported by ChicagoTribune 12 hours ago.

The wait is over: Those who want to buy health insurance on the state's Obamacare exchange can go online to see options and prices ahead of the official start of shopping Nov. 1.

Rates are increasing by an average of 44 percent for the lowest-priced bronze plans, 45 percent for the lowest-priced... Reported by ChicagoTribune 10 hours ago.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s rules allow employers to offer up to 30 percent off health insurance coverage for participants. Reported by NYTimes.com 7 hours ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is confirming that premiums will go up sharply next year for health insurance sold to millions of consumers through HealthCare.gov. Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across states served by the federally run online market. The number of insurers […] Reported by Seattle Times 8 hours ago.

The Obama Administration says that Obamacare health insurance premiums will go up by double digit percentages in 2017, according to the AP.

More on this to come...

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is retiring, effective immediately Reported by Business Insider 7 hours ago.

Hospital operator Catholic Health Initiatives, which has struggled after rapid expansion and a foray into health insurance, is in merger talks with Dignity Health to create one of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital systems by revenue. Reported by Wall Street Journal 6 hours ago.

WASHINGTON ― The rate hikes are coming. Eight days before the beginning of a crucial enrollment season for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchange marketplaces, federal officials announced Monday how much prices are going up.

The gist: a lot. But like everything Obamacare, it’s not that simple. The law’s financial assistance will protect millions of lower-income families from these premium increases, and others can find relief by switching to different plans next year to save money. There will losers, however, mostly among higher-income households that find can’t avoid the premium increases and are forced to either pay more or go without health insurance.

The average premium for the second-lowest-cost “silver” level plan on the exchanges ― the ones used to calculate tax credits eligible households can use to make coverage less expensive ― is increasing by 25 percent next year in the 39 states that use the federal system on HealthCare.gov, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report. The least-costly plans, on average, will range from $366 a month for “bronze” coverage to $674 a month for “platinum,” not counting subsidies.

Health insurance companies across the country are levying higher prices ― sometimes, much higher ― for 2017 than they did during the first three years of the Obamacare exchanges. The average benchmark plan price rose 2 percent from 2014 to 2015, and 7 percent from 2015 to this year. HHS didn’t provide an estimate of the overall average premium increases for all plans sold on the federal exchanges.

President Barack Obama made a forceful case on Thursday that the Affordable Care Act has been a success, pointing to the 20 million previously uninsured people gaining coverage since 2014 and the uninsured rate, which has never been lower. Obama also trumpeted provisions of the law, such as the ban against health insurers rejecting customers with pre-existing conditions and the availability of preventive medical services without co-payments.

The health insurance exchanges, however, haven’t attained the stability insurers demand to earn a profit on their Obamacare business, leading big players like UnitedHealth Group and Aetna, along with some smaller, regional insurers, to scale back participation in these markets because of financial losses, and others to raise rates.

The result, as the new HHS report makes clear, is that consumers will have fewer choices next year at the same time premiums are climbing. The total number of insurance providers available on the federal exchanges for next year is 167, a net decrease of 68. Likewise, the average number of insurance policies available in each county has declined from 47 to 30.

The average increase for the benchmark plans masks a tremendous amount of variation on what’s happening at the state level. According the the HHS report, a 27-year-old on average faces a 116 percent increase for an unsubsidized benchmark plan in Arizona, but that same person in Indiana would see a 2 percent price decrease. And the actual, unsubsidized dollar amounts vary greatly, from $760 a month in Alaska to $219 a month in New Hampshire.The main problem with the exchanges so far is that those who enrolled proved to be sicker, and thus costlier, than insurers and regulators expected, and too few healthier customers signed up to offset those expenses with their premium dollars. This forced insurance companies to raise premiums to cover those costs. In addition, temporary programs from the Affordable Care Act that were designed to compensate insurers with sicker-than-average customers expire this year, so companies also are increasing rates to make up the difference.

Health care costs are rising across the nation, although more slowly than they used to. But the dynamics causing Obamacare premium increases aren’t affecting those who get coverage elsewhere, including from government programs like Medicaid and Medicare or from employers. Job-based insurance premiums have been going up at a lower-than-historical rate in recent years, and that trend is expected to continue in 2017.

Open enrollment on the health insurance exchanges begins Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 31. The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday switched on a “window-shopping” feature on HealthCare.gov that allows consumers to review unsubsidized prices.

“For consumers who currently have marketplace coverage or are uninsured, our advice is the same as it’s been: Go check out HealthCare.gov for yourself,” Kathryn Martin, HHS acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, told reporters on a conference call Monday. “Not only are you likely to find affordable options for quality coverage, but the odds are good you’ll find plans more affordable than the public debate about the ACA might lead you to expect.”

Eighty-four percent of the people who use the exchanges receive tax credits and thus will be protected, as least in part, from higher prices. That’s because the maximum premium for subsidy-eligible people is pegged to a percentage of their incomes, so the financial assistance will rise along with the premiums.

The HHS report further shows that these consumers could actually spend 20 percent less per month than this year if they shop around and opt for the cheapest available plan in their current “metal” level for 2017, which would provide comparable coverage.

Tax credits are available to households earning between the federal poverty level and four times that income, or about $12,000 to $47,000 for a single person, and about $24,000 to $97,000 for a family of four.

At the lower end of the income range ― and 81 percent of those on the federal exchanges earn 250 percent of the poverty level or less ― the subsidies are large. That’s why, despite the large rate increases for next year, HHS estimates that 77 percent of marketplace consumers could find coverage for $100 a month or less, and 65 percent could get plans that cost $50 a month or less.

Nevertheless, that still leaves millions of people who don’t qualify for tax credits on the exchanges, or who buy unsubsidized policies directly from a health insurance company or through a broker.

Those households will bear the full brunt of these premium hikes. Some portion of them will decide they can’t afford the increase and will opt to be uninsured and pay the tax penalty for not having coverage, under the law’s individual mandate. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 9 million people get their insurance “off-exchange,” and HHS data show that 2.2 million people who enrolled on the exchanges this year didn’t receive subsidies.

Obama administration officials are describing 2017 as a “transition” year for the exchanges, because insurers now know enough about their customers’ costs to more accurately set prices. Officials predict large increases are less likely in the future.

The Department of Health and Human Services projects 13.8 million people will choose a plan during the three-month sign-up campaign for 2017, which would be 1.1 million more than the tally during the 2016 open enrollment period. Average monthly paid enrollment will be 11.4 million next year, also 1.1 million higher than the same figure this year.

This represents modest growth, despite the fact that tens of millions of people remain uninsured, and even though just under half of them would qualify for subsidies. HHS also estimates that 2.5 million subsidy-eligible people currently are paying full price because they aren’t using the exchanges and instead are buying directly from insurers off the exchanges.

But high sticker prices, especially for those who receive small subsidies or none at all, threaten to discourage people who need the coverage the least: those healthy individuals that insurers covet because they pay in and seldom draw down. If these exchanges can’t find the right balance between costs and revenues, insurers will be less willing to sell policies on them, and customers will be less willing to buy that coverage, which would undermine the system for everyone using it.

Obama has proposed a number of amendments to the Affordable Care Act, as has Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including increasing the financial assistance available and creating a government-run public option plan that would compete with private insurers.

Congressional Republicans oppose these changes to the law and maintain that the law must entirely be repealed, a position shared by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. No Republican has proposed an alternative approach that would maintain current, historically high level of health insurance coverage.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.

Hundreds of thousands of consumers whose health insurance plans are being discontinued for 2017 will get some flexibility when signing up for a new plan during the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment, a sign of continued turmoil in the exchange markets. Reported by Wall Street Journal 5 hours ago.

Greenberg Traurig, LLP shareholders Richard J. Fidei and Françoise Gilbert will be speaking at the 73rd Annual Louisiana Insurer’s Conference taking place at Parc 55 in San Francisco, Oct. 28.

(PRWEB) October 24, 2016

Greenberg Traurig, LLP shareholders Richard J. Fidei and Françoise Gilbert will be speaking at the 73rd Annual Louisiana Insurer’s Conference taking place at Parc 55 in San Francisco, Oct. 28. Gilbert and Fidei will discuss the importance of preventing, preparing for, and putting in place best practices in the event of a cyber-breach on an insurer.

Fidei is a shareholder in Greenberg Traurig's Insurance Regulatory and Transactions Practice and Government Law & Policy Group. Fidei focuses his practice on national insurance regulatory and compliance matters. He represents a wide variety of insurance entities including insurance companies, health plans, reinsurers, managing general agencies, brokers, third-party administrators, claims companies, and other insurance-related entities in connection with regulatory, corporate, compliance, and transactional issues. Fidei is experienced in the formation, licensure, and capitalization of insurers, business expansion activities, financial and market conduct examinations, reinsurance and alternate risk transfer mechanisms, product filings, as well as many other operational and regulatory issues applicable to insurance entities.

Gilbert, a shareholder in the firm’s Silicon Valley office, focuses her practice and research on U.S. and global data privacy and security in a wide variety of markets, including, among others, internet, cloud computing, big data, connected devices, sensors, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies. Her clients include public or multi-national entities, cloud service providers, big data analytics companies, connected device developers, publishers, internet stores, insurance companies, financial institutions, manufacturers, service providers, trade associations, non-profit organizations, software developers, and others. Gilbert is the author of the two volume “Global Privacy and Security Law” treatise, published by Wolters Kluwer (http://www.globalprivacybook.com) and the co-author of a dozen other law books, including “Privacy Compliance and Litigation in California” published by CEB. She has co-chaired the PLI Privacy and Security Law Institute for the past 17 years. She has received law degrees both in the United States and in France, and holds CIPP/US, CIPP/EU, and CIPM certifications from the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

About Greenberg Traurig’s Cybersecurity, Privacy and Crisis Management Practice

Greenberg Traurig’s Cybersecurity, Privacy and Crisis Management Practice is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of attorneys and professionals dedicated to developing strategies to address privacy, data security, and information management issues including privacy audits, policies and procedures, data security and PCI compliance, employee privacy, record retention/electronic discovery, international/cross-border data transfer, data breach readiness and response and litigation and dispute resolution, as well as the defense of data privacy, security breach and TCPA class action suits.

About Greenberg Traurig’s Insurance Regulatory & Transactions Practice

The Greenberg Traurig Insurance Regulatory & Transactions Group brings together lawyers from its national and international offices with experience in a broad variety of complementary disciplines – including insurance regulatory, tax, corporate finance and securities, securitization and structured finance, litigation, health care and governmental affairs – to support clients from all segments of the insurance industry. The group provides tailored legal services designed to meet the varied needs of our clients in the areas of insurance regulation, legislative and public policy advocacy, life and health insurance, property and casualty insurance, premium finance, securitization and derivatives, and insurance litigation.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 2,000 attorneys serving clients from 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is No. 1 on the 2015 Law360 Most Charitable Firms list, second largest in the U.S. on the 2016 Law360 400, Top 20 on the 2015 Am Law Global 100, and among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite. More information at: http://www.gtlaw.com. Reported by PRWeb 5 hours ago.

La Maestra and the Chargers Girls to Improve Breast Cancer Awareness

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) October 24, 2016

La Maestra Family Clinic, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Federal Qualified Health Center in partnership with American Cancer Society and the National Football League will hold A Crucial Catch Day on October 25, 2016 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at La Maestra’s main clinic site located at 4060 Fairmount Avenue, San Diego, CA 92105. At the event, La Maestra will provide free breast cancer screenings (mammograms) and breast health education with a focus on women ages 40 and older, thanks to the generous support of the American Cancer Society and NFL.

At this year’s event the two San Diego Chargers Girls will be onsite to promote the importance of obtaining breast cancers screenings annually. There will also be family friendly activities including a pink-themed raffle, screening gifts, and giveaways for all participants.

La Maestra’s 36-foot, state-of-the-art, mobile mammography coach will be on site. The coach is equipped with full-field digital mammography and 3D Tomosynthesis equipment, which takes multiple images and creates a three-dimensional, virtual view that allows radiologists to examine the area with a high degree of accuracy. The organizations goal is to provide at least 65 mammograms and to provide breast health education to at least 100 participants. The organization will also raffle off pink Coach purses, Michael Kors watches, and other items such as healthy eating cookbooks and pink-themed gift bags.

In the clinics service area which includes communities in central, east and south San Diego County the California Health Interview Survey reports that approximately 47 percent of low-income women in this region have not received a mammogram in the past year and 28 percent of these women are uninsured. These findings suggest that low utilization of screening services is impacted by socioeconomic status and health insurance coverage. Data from the Susan G. Komen 2015 Community Profile also shows that African American women have the highest rate of late-stage incidence of breast cancer at 52 percent and the highest death rates at almost 28 percent. These statistics indicate a significant need for breast health education and screenings among this population.

A Crucial Catch is an effort to promote health equity and address cancer screening disparities. La Maestra serves some of the most underserved and ethnically diverse communities in San Diego. These communities have some of the highest numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged women many of which encounter significant barriers to accessing mammogram services. A Crucial Catch aims to improve breast cancer awareness and screening rates by delivering culturally and linguistically appropriate care to the community, fostering a welcoming and safe environment in an effort to promote early diagnosis and access to treatment. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, early detection of cancer significantly increases the chances of successful treatment.

Margarita Colin, a patient at La Maestra and a breast cancer survivor said, “I never noticed anything. It was silent. No pain.” That was about four years ago. Now Colin’s is cancer free and currently in remission. Colin is just one example of how early detection can save a life.

Through A Crucial Catch Day and a $50,000 grant from the American Cancer Society presented to the organization on October 2, 2016 at the Chargers stadium (pictured below), La Maestra will continue efforts to provide education, outreach and navigation, and help individuals access breast cancer screenings.

                                                                     ###

La Maestra Family Clinic, Inc., doing business as (d.b.a) La Maestra Community Health Centers (http://www.lamaestra.org) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Federally Qualified Health Center. The mission of La Maestra is to provide quality health care and education; to improve the overall well-being of the family; bringing the underserved, ethnically diverse communities into the mainstream of society through a caring, effective, culturally and linguistically competent manner, respecting the dignity of all patients.

The American Cancer Society and the National Football League are committed to saving lives from breast cancer and addressing the unequal burden in cancer in underserved communities. The campaign “A Crucial Catch” in partnership with the ACS is focused on the importance of women receiving regular breast cancer screenings.

                                                                     ### Reported by PRWeb 5 hours ago.

Remember when Obama toured around the country telling everyone that Obamacare was going to increase competition and lower healthcare premiums?  If not, here is an example to help jog your memory (comments taken from Obama remarks delivered at Prince George's Community College on 9/26/13):



Now, this is real simple.  *It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak -- (laughter)* -- same way you shop for a TV on Amazon.  You just go on and you start looking, and here are all the options.

 

It’s buying insurance on the private market, but because now you’re part of a big group plan -- everybody in Maryland is all logging in and taking a look at the prices -- you’ve got new choices.  *Now you've got new competition, because insurers want your business.  And that means you will have cheaper prices. * (Applause.)



 

As it turns out, pretty much nothing that Obama and his healthcare "experts" predicted about Obamacare actually came true.  With 2017 rates now finalized across the country, in fact, *Obamacare premiums are expected to increase an average of 25% nationally *according to data from the Kaiser Foundation.  Meanwhile, *the 10 hardest hit states will see premiums increase an average of 62% while Arizona is officially the biggest loser with rates in Phoenix soaring 145%.*

 

Of course, as we've pointed out before, *these skyrocketing rates could inevitably toss the entire Obamacare system into a death spiral from which it may never recover. * In order to function properly, Obamacare required a substantial number of young/healthy people to sign up on the exchanges...we call it the "Young & Healthy Tax."  Unfortunately, many young/healthy people decided that they would rather not pay their "Young & Healthy Tax" and decided instead to pay the penalties associated with just not having healthcare at all.  These shortfalls in new participants, of course, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for health insurers who, in hindsight, miscalculated their risk pool.  These losses have now resulted in the massive premium spikes we're currently seeing which will likely just result in even lower sign ups until the entire system eventually just collapses. 

As we pointed out before, the following two maps below beautifully *illustrate the epic collapse of Obamacare coverage in just 1 year.  *Notice that, despite Obama's promises of increased competition, in reality, *the majority of the country will go from having 3+ options for healthcare in 2016 to just 1 option in 2017* (charts per the New York Times).

*2016 healthcare insurance carriers by county:*

 

*2017 healthcare insurance carriers by county:*

 

Meanwhile, the *Obama administration continues to insist that all is well with the Affordable Care Act* because many people participating in the exchanges receive taxpayer-funded subsidies...which is fine unless you're one of the 1mm+ people in the country who purchase private insurance without the benefit of subsidies (or the taxpayer who has to fund those subsidies for everyone else).



In a call with reporters on Monday, officials with the Obama administration stressed that the new numbers don’t reflect what most people will end up paying.

 

*“We think [consumers] will ultimately be surprised by the affordability of the product,”* said Kevin Griffis, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 



*The first step is admitting you have a problem.* Reported by Zero Hedge 4 hours ago.

The subsidized health insurance program enters its fourth year in New Jersey with only half the plans that were available last year. Reported by NJ.com 5 hours ago.

Obama administration projects sharp rise in premiums after insurers abandon online marketplaces Reported by FT.com 4 hours ago.