Brokers Are Reluctant Players In A Most Challenging ACA Open-Enrollment Season
With federal support slashed for organizations that provided consumers help in making their health plan choices, insurance brokers have to pick up the slack.
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With federal support slashed for organizations that provided consumers help in making their health plan choices, insurance brokers have to pick up the slack.
The ferocious fires in Northern California underscore the vulnerability of seniors and disabled people whose mobility is limited. Experts recommend basic precautions.
In this episode of “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post discuss what happens now that Republicans have officially failed in their latest effort to overhaul Obamacare. Plus an interview with Bruce Lesley of First Focus about the fate of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
With the nation's opioid crisis, urine testing has become a booming business and is especially lucrative for doctors who operate their own labs, a Kaiser Health News investigation finds. And dozens of practitioners have earned "the lion’s share" of their Medicare income exclusively from urine drug screens.
Regulators are beginning to scrutinize claims by companies that their alternative plans help people meet Obamacare requirements.
Affordable Care Act supporters in Georgia say they are facing a daunting task in getting people signed up for health insurance.
Open enrollment for the federal health law’s marketplace plans begin Nov. 1. In most states, the sign-up period ends Dec. 15, about six weeks sooner than past years.
A new link creates two-way access to the state registry that documents the type of medical care sick and frail patients want — or refuse.
Gobbling up doctors’ independent practices is lucrative for hospital systems — but not necessarily a good deal for the physicians or consumers, critics say. Northern California is a case in point.
As the planet warms, wildfires such as the latest disastrous blazes in Northern California have increased in frequency and scope. Beyond the environmental effects, people suffer health repercussions that can be disabling and even deadly.
More than 40 percent of the plans included less than a quarter of the doctors in the area, University of Pennsylvania researchers found.
Most acquisitions by hospitals of physician practices are too small to trigger antitrust attention, study says. But a buying spree of “onesies and twosies” doctor practices has driven competition down and prices up.
Three years ago, only about a quarter of the nation’s large employers were very confident they would have a health plan in 10 years. That number has now risen to 65 percent.
Medicaid is rarely associated with getting rich. But some insurance companies are reaping spectacular profits off the taxpayer-funded program in California, even when the state finds their patient care is subpar.
Sharing ministries are based on biblical principles and are not the same as commercial insurance. They are not legally binding and may not cover some common medical expenses.
Advocates say California’s Medicaid program is violating its own rules by overturning decisions that would allow seriously ill patients to stay out of managed care and keep their doctors.
The health insurance company, which operates in 12 states plus Puerto Rico, grew out of a network of Southern California clinics founded in 1980. Molina’s track record of working with low-income patients has served it well under Obamacare.
The new law will help people with chronic conditions that require multiple prescriptions cut down on their shuttles to the drug store and could improve adherence to their drugs.
UnitedHealthcare is no longer routinely paying for out-of-network emergency room physicians and other specialists even when they work for hospitals in the insurer’s network.
The plans, which were in existence when the health law was enacted in 2010 and have not changed significantly, cover about a quarter of insured workers.
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