Obamacare enrolment begins, but no major gain for Wipro, Cognizant

IT services companies, which were betting on the enrolment for Obamacare to revive faster growth in healthcare services business in the US, may be disappointed as the Trump administration has cut budgets and time for enrolment of the landmark healthcare programme.

Software service providers such as Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture and BPO companies earn a good portion of their revenues by providing services to health insurance companies and the marketplaces for buying health insurance in the US. These companies were awaiting clarity on the proposed change in legislation of Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare and some of them felt the pinch as clients delayed in making decisions for new projects.

While Wipro, which counts close to 15 per cent of its revenues from healthcare services, claimed to have lost $120 million on a run-rate basis in the past 12 months; another IT major Accenture saw business being impacted due to delay in decision making.

As the Open Enrollment has begun for 2018 on November 1, the US administration has shortened the duration to 45 days, unlike earlier years, and not given enough publicity resulting in confusion among citizens.

Global analysts largely say "nothing much has changed" despite efforts by the current administration to replace the healthcare legislation and this could mean no major change in business for IT services companies, both Indian and global, at least this year.
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Trump warns McCain after his speech on 'half-baked' American foreign policy

President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a warning shot after Republican Senator John McCain questioned "half-baked, spurious nationalism" in America's foreign policy.

Trump said in a radio interview with WMAL in Washington that "people have to be careful because at some point I fight back." The president added "I'm being very, very nice but at some point I fight back and it won't be pretty."

McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5 years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp and is battling brain cancer, offered a simple response to Trump: "I have faced tougher adversaries."

In Philadelphia last night, the six-term Republican senator from Arizona received an award for a lifetime of service and sacrifice to the country.

In addition to recalling his more than two decades of military service and his imprisonment during the war, McCain took a moment to go a step further than the night's other speakers, who lamented what many described as a fractured political climate.
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Obamacare provisions: Trump robs free birth control from millions of women

US President Donald Trump's administration annulled today an Obamacare provision that obliged employer health plans to pay for contraception, potentially stripping free birth control from millions of women.

The move extends to all commercial enterprises an exemption already given to religious institutions.

Rights groups erupted in anger and the American Civil Liberties Union threatened a lawsuit, but the White House called it a matter of religious freedom.

The ruling expands "exemptions to protect moral convictions for certain entities and individuals whose health plans are subject to a mandate of contraceptive coverage" under Obamacare, a note published by the US Department of Health and Human Services said.

Millions of American women who had the cost of contraception reimbursed could be affected by the Trump administration's decision, which conservative groups had been seeking since Obamacare began.

Challenges to Obamacare had reached the US Supreme Court, which in 2014 ruled that family-owned private companies could choose not to provide contraceptive coverage to female employees on religious grounds.
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California sues Donald Trump over Obamacare birth control mandate rollback

California state has sued President Donald Trump's administration arguing that its rollback of a requirement for employers to provide contraceptive coverage to workers is unconstitutional and unlawfully targets women, the media reported.

The lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California here on Friday, comes hours after the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule change that allows more employers to opt out of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) birth control mandate by claiming religious or moral objections, reports The San Francisco Chronicle.
Prior to this rule change, only houses of worship, religiously affiliated non-profits and some private companies with few shareholders could opt out of providing birth control coverage.

The new rule also allows publicly traded companies and all nonprofits and universities to take a religious exemption.

"...millions of women in California may be left without access to contraceptives and counseling and the state will be shouldering the additional fiscal and administrative burden as women seek access for this coverage through state-funded programmes," The Los Angeles Times quoted the lawsuit as saying.
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