Latest KFF Health News Stories
Can Employers Dump Workers To Health Exchanges? Yes, For A Price
How to expand Americans’ health insurance choices under the Affordable Care Act without sabotaging employer coverage? The Obama administration is still working to get the balance right. The latest tweak from the Internal Revenue Service essentially prohibits employers from giving workers tax-free dollars to buy policies in the online public marketplaces created by the health law. […]
Single-Payer Advocates Hit Capitol With New Sense Of Reality
Advocates for a single-payer “Medicare for all” health system are fanning out across Capitol Hill this week, lobbying members of Congress. But years of mostly fruitless struggles – and watching the intense opposition to the much less sweeping Affordable Care Act – appears to have left them with a much more clear-eyed view of what […]
Study: Limited Competition Raised Obamacare Prices
Many insurers only dipped a toe into the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces for their first year. Cigna, one of the country’s largest insurers, offered 2014 plans to individuals in fewer than half a dozen states. Humana is only in a little more than a dozen states. The biggest health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, didn’t offer any policies […]
Survey: Many Women Unaware How Health Law Benefits Them
A large number of women face significant barriers to health care, and while the health law will likely help them get services, some are unaware of the benefits already in effect, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Intended as a […]
Study: Diabetes Afflicts 1 In 3 Hospitalized Patients Over 34 In California
In California, roughly one in three hospitalized people over 34 years old has diabetes, increasing the complexity and cost of their care, according to a report released Thursday. Hospitalizations for patients with diabetes on average cost about $2,200 more than for patients who didn’t have the disease, regardless of the reason they were admitted, according […]
States’ Medicaid Decisions Leave Health Centers, Patients In Lurch
More than 1 million patients who use federally funded community health centers will remain uninsured because they live in one of 24 states that chose not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, according to a study released Friday by researchers at George Washington University. Most of those patients live in the South, because […]
IRS Urged To Broaden Preventive Coverage In High-Deductible Plans
High deductible health plans paired with tax-free savings accounts — increasingly common in job-based insurance and long a staple for those who buy their own coverage – pose financial difficulties for people with chronic health problems. That’s because they have to pay the annual deductible, which could be $1,250 or more, before most of their medications […]
During Confirmation Hearing, Burwell Pledges Support For CHIP
Advocates of the Children’s Health Insurance Program cheered Thursday when President Obama’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services said she supports continued funding for the program, which covers about 8 million low-income children whose families’ income exceeds Medicaid’s eligibility guidelines. During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing, Sylvia […]
Arizona Offers ‘Sneak Peak’ At Costs Of Shifting Kids Off CHIP
Families of Arizona children who were forced to switch from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to private plans sold in the federal marketplace are likely paying more and getting fewer benefits, according to a study released Thursday. Millions of families who are ineligible for Medicaid could soon face the same choice if Congress chooses […]
Report: Federal Exchange A Comparative Bargain
Sometimes there really are economies of scale. And the nation’s health insurance exchanges may be a case in point. As rocky as its rollout was, it cost the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, an average of $647 of federal tax dollars to sign up each enrollee, according to a new report. It cost an average of $1,503 […]
Castellani: Health Law’s Cost-Sharing Could Limit Patient Access To Prescription Drugs
Enrollees in some of the health law’s most popular plans will face high cost-sharing requirements that the pharmaceutical industry says could keep patients from getting the drugs they need. Most silver plans in the online marketplaces, or exchanges, require patients to pay for prescription drugs as part of the plan’s deductible, while nearly all bronze plans do, according […]
Chemo Costs In U.S. Driven Higher By Shift To Hospital Outpatient Facilities
The price of cancer drugs has doubled in the past decade, with the average brand-name cancer drug in the U.S. costing $10,000 for a month’s supply, up from $5,000 in 2003, according to a new report by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, a health information, services and technology company. And those are just average prices; […]
More Health Insurance Equals Fewer Deaths In Massachusetts
Fewer people died in Massachusetts after the state required people to have health insurance, according to researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health. In each of the first four years of the state law, 320 fewer Massachusetts men and women died than would have been expected. That’s one life extended for every 830 newly […]
Colorado Redraws ACA Map To Cut Sky-High Ski Town Rates
Relief is in sight – and it won’t involve a lawsuit – for the four counties in Colorado that have the highest Obamacare health insurance premiums in the country. Local officials in the ski resort region in the mountains west of Denver had threatened to sue over the high rates. But on Friday Colorado Insurance Commissioner […]
Hospitals’ Purchase Of Doctors Leads To Higher Prices, Spending, Study Finds
A new study gives ammunition to what health economists and health insurers have argued for years: When hospitals buy physician practices, the result is usually higher hospital prices and increased spending by privately insured patients. The study, published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, was based on an analysis of 2.1 million hospital claims from workers […]
Study: Illegal Immigration Doesn’t Cause Overuse Of Health Care
Even before the Affordable Care Act was close to passing, it was clear that immigrants illegally living in the country would not be part of many of the law’s benefits. They are not allowed to buy health insurance from the online marketplaces, at least in part because opponents argued that these immigrants overburden emergency rooms and hospitals. But a study released […]
Doctors Think Others Often Prescribe Unnecessary Care
Three out of four physicians believe that fellow doctors prescribe an unnecessary test or procedure at least once a week, a survey released Thursday finds. The most frequent reasons that physicians order extraneous—and costly—medical care are fears of being sued, impulses to be extra careful and desires to reassure their own assessments of the patient, […]
Healthcare.gov Finished Strong Despite Rocky Start, Enrollment Data Show
Obama administration officials on Thursday predicted health insurance premiums would be stable next year despite concerns that not enough young and healthy people signed up through the online insurance exchanges. “The risk pool is fundamentally large and varied to support that kind of pricing…in every state,” said Mike Hash, director of the office of health […]
WellPoint Softens Forecast For Obamacare Rate Hikes
Welcoming a surge of young, last-minute enrollees, the biggest player in the health law’s insurance marketplaces on Wednesday tempered its prediction for substantial 2015 rate increases. Five weeks ago WellPoint executive Ken Goulet told analysts that premium increases for 2015 plans “will probably be in double-digit plus.” On Wednesday’s conference call to discuss first-quarter results, […]
Public Overwhelmingly Supports Law’s Contraceptive Mandate, Poll Finds
By a nearly two-to-one margin, the public supports the health law’s requirement that private health plans cover prescription birth control without cost-sharing, according to a poll released Tuesday. The provision, which is at the heart of a case being weighed by the Supreme Court, was endorsed 61 to 32 percent and was most popular among women, younger […]
