Reimbursement

Each year, a large portion of healthcare spending is on services for which consumers could price-shop ahead of time, a new study finds, suggesting that price transparency is an important factor in cutting down on healthcare costs.

While hospitals build wellness centers, insurers too are investing in programs that have moved beyond tobacco-free living sessions and gym membership benefits.

Over 300 healthcare and patient advocacy organizations sent a letter to Senate and House leaders on Thursday urging them to press the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to permanently withdraw a reduced Part B drug payment model from consideration.

Consumers were urged to buy policies in their 50s, because premiums rose the longer they waited. About 4.8 million people were covered by long-term care policies in 2014. But insurers botched just about every aspect of the policies they sold in the early days of the industry, said Joseph Belth, a retired professor of insurance at Indiana University known as one of the insurance industry's toughest critics.

The Aetna Whole Health-Virtua plan will be introduced in South Jersey later this year and will use Virtua's community-based health system of hospitals, outpatient facilities, urgent care centers, and health and wellness centers.

The House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee held a bipartisan debate Wednesday over the future of Medicare and planned cuts to the Medicare Advantage program as sharp party divides over healthcare continue to widen.

Medicare's policy now has broad support from health providers and patient groups, but neither physicians nor the American Medical Association foresee a surge in end-of-life planning among Medicare's more than 50 million enrollees.

Population health outfit Caradigm has announced it will be forming what it calls a Care Transformation Team that it claims will help improve the outcomes of population health initiatives for the providers it serves.

In 2016, health insurance co-ops have gained needed enrollment but half of those set up under the Affordable Care Act three years ago have failed, costing taxpayers over $1 billion, according to a Senate subcommittee which has investigated what went wrong.

Isaac Kojo Anakwah Thompson, a Florida doctor who falsely diagnosed hundreds of patients as having a rare spine condition, has pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud and faces spending a decade in prison.