June 25, 2012 – Americans continue to anxiously await the long over-due decision on President Obama’s health law.  There is hope that the big announcement will be made by the end of the week.  Check out this article on the BostonHerald website that talks about the debate that will surely follow “The Decision” – Supreme Court Health Law Ruling Will Only Begin More Debate

This article follows the variety of scenarios that may come about from the final decision and talks about the guessing game that is being played among experts – Health Law Guessing Game Grips the Capitol

We will keep you posted daily as more information is released on this epic health law announcement and the details that arise from “The Decision”.

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently released their fifth annual National Health Insurer Report Card which is based on a random sampling of about 1.1 million electronic claims for 1.9 million medical services submitted in the month of February 2012.  The companies included were Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Health Care Service Corporation, Humana, Regence, UnitedHealthcare and Medicare.

The AMA found that these commercial health insurers incorrectly processed about one in 10 claims in the early part of 2012 which is an improvement over error rates from the previous year.  According to the report card, the error rate was only 9.5% compared to 19% last year.  This reduction in errors adds up to approximately $8 billion in health systems savings by eliminating costs from extra administrative work.  Another $7 billion could be saved if there were no errors made on claims.

The AMA has worked closely with individual health insurance companies over the past year to troubleshoot the claims payments systems and reduce overall errors.  Their efforts to transform the health insurance billing and payment system is a major factor in cutting error rates in half.  They will continue to work with insurers to drop this error rate even further going forward.

Written by Sam Tabes

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