President Donald Trump has signed an anti-government shutdown bill that will eliminate $12.7 billion in Affordable Care Act health insurer fee taxes for 2019.

The six groups participating in the project say in a consensus statement that they want to reduce the number of health care professionals subject to prior authorization requirements and eliminate obsolete prior authorization requirements.

A critical bill that could keep the federal government running until Feb. 16 could also cut health insurers' and employer health plans' taxes by a total of about $29 billion over 10 years.

A pioneer in efforts to sell health insurance through the web, eHealth Inc., gave its assessment Tuesday in a preview of the company's earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017.

Consumers seem to have fewer problems with Affordable Care Act tax rules these days, but consumers who do have ACA tax problems may end up drifting through procedural fog.

The Employee Benefits Security Administration agreed in November to push the effective date back to April 1, from Jan. 1, to give disability insurers, employers, and benefit plan administrators and trade groups more time to prove that the new regulations would hurt the group disability market.

Under the draft regulations, a general business group in a multi-state metropolitan area could offer an AHP for all of its member employers, regardless of what industry the employers were in.

An arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may have started a major new fight between patient privacy advocates and substance abuse benefits managers with updated regulations on how patient information can be shared.