Reimbursement
As Congress has failed to pass legislation to continue funding the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services has furloughed more than half of its employees. Medicare and Medicaid funding will survive, at least in the short term.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is getting ready for the first year of its multi-state health plans, offering consumers another, perhaps little-known option in state and federal exchanges.
Patient advocacy groups have made available a cancer insurance checklist tool to help cancer patients decide which is the most appropriate health plan for them when shopping for coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.
Medicare officials will delay until 2014 enforcement of controversial new rules that define when hospital patients should receive observation care, rather than being admitted, a distinction that makes beneficiaries ineligible for follow-up nursing home coverage.
The opening of the health insurance exchanges may be anticlimactic after all the waiting and noise from supporters and critics of the Affordable Care Act. Health insurers and exchanges are expected to be ready, at least with minimal processes, to be able to enroll customers Oct. 1.
American healthcare needs a trillion dollar disruption, and the Affordable Care Act may end up supporting quite a bit of it -- while also slowing innovation in some areas, according to innovation researchers.
Coming just ahead of the opening of health insurance exchanges, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care topped the list of the National Committee for Quality Assurance annual rankings of 2013 health plans, followed by Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest.
The idea of Medicare bundled payments for post-acute care has a ways to go before it could be used widely, according to a study in CMS' Medicare and Medicaid Research Review.
Some healthcare organizations are beginning to disclose their prices in a bid towards transparency, but most still have not. However, that may change with continued cost pressures in an era of reform. And a new line of business may help push them.
Health plans will face a new competitive environment when health insurance exchanges open for business Oct.1, along with a new focus on efforts to attract and retain consumers.