Reimbursement

WellPoint Inc. has earned the status of Common Security Framework Certified from HITRUST, the information security and risk management organization, making it the largest health benefits company to achieve the certification for 2013.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, vital sexual health services for men and women are now covered by insurance plans at no extra cost. The law also ends annual and lifetime dollar limits on such care.

Firearm assaults cost U.S. hospitals almost $630 million in 2010 and alot of that falls on public payers, according to recent research by the Urban Institute.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans to re-bid the city workers' health insurance contract has come to a halt for now, after a state court agreed with municipal union concerns and put the request for proposals on temporary hold.

In the states with largest uninsured populations, the stakes are high for this fall's insurance exchange enrollment -- the difference between the healthcare status-quo and improvements in healthcare access and sustainability.

A new healthcare environment where value is more important that volume requires a business model that incentivizes all providers on the care-delivery continuum to delivery higher value care.

The Department of Health and Human Services is promising consumers a simple enrollment process, but the federal marketplace website, along with a number of state exchanges, were glitchy or non-functioning during the morning of Oct. 1, as software kinks were exposed and servers were strained.

As health insurance exchange enrollment begins today, the stakes are high for states with large uninsured populations that are declining to expand Medicaid. That political decision could be the difference between the status quo and improvements in healthcare access and sustainability.

The federal government has shut down, but the health insurance exchanges opened for business as planned Tuesday, although with traffic tie-ups, despite Republican lawmakers' efforts to block a major component of the health reform law from taking effect.

Many of the 50 individuals who showed up for a community forum to find out about the Maryland Health Connection on a September evening in suburban Washington appeared to share a need for what the health insurance exchange could offer them.