Insurance Companies using ACA as excuse to delay payment

[Frostbit]

Just found out from our office manager that most health insurance carriers have notified us that payments for the first 90 days (a full fucking quarter) of 2014 will be delayed because the companies are unsure who will actually be covered. The "keep your own insurance" promise renege followed by the "delay" of actual cancelled policies have left the companies in limbo. Thus they won't pay.

How well would your business or employer fair if their creditors decided not to pay for three months?

[Gingersnap]

Just found out from our office manager that most health insurance carriers have notified us that payments for the first 90 days (a full fucking quarter) of 2014 will be delayed because the companies are unsure who will actually be covered. The "keep your own insurance" promise renege followed by the "delay" of actual cancelled policies have left the companies in limbo. Thus they won't pay.

How well would your business or employer fair if their creditors decided not to pay for three months?

Well, pretty well if they were government agencies or government employees. That must be the problem.

[scott]

Just found out from our office manager that most health insurance carriers have notified us that payments for the first 90 days (a full fucking quarter) of 2014 will be delayed because the companies are unsure who will actually be covered. The "keep your own insurance" promise renege followed by the "delay" of actual cancelled policies have left the companies in limbo. Thus they won't pay.

How well would your business or employer fair if their creditors decided not to pay for three months?

"We've got to pass the bill before we find out what's in it away from the fog."

Yup.

We would be out of business immediately if this happened to us and we have cash reserves for 6-12 months of operations expense along with cash reserves for 12 months of income. We do not have cash reserves for even 2 months of product costs. Since healthcare offices have almost all operations costs and little if any product costs, it's impossible to have enough cash reserves unless one is making very hefty profit margins.

A typical primary care medical office has revenue of about $500,000 per month per Physician. The docs usually take $160K salary. So assuming they took the short term financial hit knowing they are going to eventually get paid, there's still $1.4 Million that has to be paid out each quarter. The only solution there is to borrow the money, at a rate of 11% in the best of conditions. That essentially erases the salary for the doc.

It gets worse though.

http://news.yahoo.com/obamacare-perilous-protection-plan-debtors-080000556.html

Docs see patients if they have insurance coverage. Insurance companies cannot drop patients due to non-payment of premiums until they are 90 days overdue. However, the insurance companies only have to pay for services rendered for 30 days if the patient is delinquent so guess who is on the hook to collect the rest?

The docs.


This is such a fucking trainwreck.