Policy and Legislation
About 100,000 Iowans newly eligible for Medicaid are set to get private insurance coverage through a demonstration project approved by the federal government, the second Medicaid "private option" okayed this year.
To keep premiums down on the new insurance marketplaces, payers have created smaller networks of hospitals. But just how small are they?
In 2012, Medicare spent close to $10 billion on Graduate Medical Education. Despite this taxpayer subsidy, very little is spent on training doctors in the nuances of caring for older people.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services intends to finalize the Medicaid Federal Upper payment Limits (FULs) for multiple source drugs in July 2014. This will mean less drug price variance for state Medicaid programs.
Less than 30 percent of uninsured millennials queried in a new Harvard poll are planning to buy coverage in public exchanges, and a majority disapprove of the Affordable Care Act as a whole -- suggesting sustainability problems in the first year of the HIXs.
Administration proposes financial fix to offset potential losses from continuing cancelled plans.
Physicians across a number of specialties are taking the lead to test developing new payment and delivery models. A few of them described their projects at a Brookings Institution forum on physician payment reform.
President Barack Obama's bid to throw a life preserver to stranded consumers who received cancellation notices from their health plans may increase bad debt for hospitals and financial losses and uncertainty for payers.
Concentrated economic power, combined with fee-for-service incentives, has made healthcare "the least consumer-friendly" U.S. industry and enabled arbitrary and capricious price gouging, according to the man behind Time magazine's "Bitter Pill" feature.
Like many, doctors see the appeal of mobile applications, but they have been cautious about using them in their practices. But now that the FDA has issued its final guidance on medical mobile applications, the path is clearer on how these tools can be used in offices.