HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA): “At a time when many health insurers are exiting the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act or thinking about it, one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country is jumping in — and they’re doing it through an alliance with a health insurer co-founded by Ivanka Trump’s brother-in-law, Joshua Kushner.
Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center, is partnering with Oscar Health to sell individual insurance plans in five northeast Ohio counties. The plans will be available on the exchanges, where people can use government subsidies to purchase health coverage as well as off the exchanges, where people bear the full cost of their health coverage.
Unlike a traditional insurer that negotiates to offer coverage with many different providers, the health plan will only include the Cleveland Clinic’s network of providers, including its well-known main hospital, 10 regional hospitals and more than 150 outpatient clinics.
The partnership will not address the larger problem overshadowing the law’s exchanges: the prospect that some places will have no options at all in 2018. In Ohio, 18 counties are at risk of having no insurers next year, but the new health plan will enter counties in the northeast part of the state, none of which are at risk of being bare with no options.”
-Carolyn Y. Johnson, “One of the most prestigious brands in medicine is jumping into Obamacare,” The Washington Post online, June 15, 2017 01:30pm