Gary Cohen U.S. Health Insurance Regulator Resigns

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Gary Cohen was responsible for setting up Obamacare exchanges and establishing regulations for insurance companies under the plan. According to published reports, top Obamacare official Gary Cohen is resigning at the end of the month.

“Obamacare” is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Together with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, it represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

  

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Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Gary Cohen’s boss said according to Bloomberg News that, “Under his leadership, CCIIO established the rules which have made the promise of the Affordable Care Act a reality for millions of Americans who now can have the security of health coverage without regard to their previous health condition, and can know that their insurance will cover all the most common services they will need.”

Reuters reported that at a January hearing two House of Representative Republicans told him point blank that he should be fired. The president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni, said according to Bloomberg News, that he had “done a very good job” implementing the law’s insurance regulations. It has been reported that his temporary replacement is Dr. Mandy Cohen, a physician who currently heads the insurance oversight agency’s consumer support group.

Reforms to the Medicare payment system are meant to promote greater efficiency in the healthcare delivery system by restructuring Medicare reimbursements from fee-for-service to bundled payments. Under the new payment system, a single payment is paid to a hospital and a physician group for a defined episode of care (such as a hip replacement) rather than individual payments to individual service providers. In addition, it has been asserted that the Medicare Part D coverage gap (commonly called the “donut hole”) will shrink incrementally, closing completely by January 1, 2020.

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