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A college student’s bill for outpatient knee surgery is a whopper — $96K — but the most mysterious part is a $1,167 charge from a health care provider she didn’t even know was in the operating room.
If Democrat Joe Biden is successful in his bid for the presidency but the Senate remains in GOP control, Democrats’ plans for major changes in health care may be curbed.
When a colleague brings a medical billing problem to human resources director Steve Benasso — he goes to battle. “I am a bulldog on this stuff,” he said. In this episode, Benasso tells how he does it.
The state hospital association has endorsed Dale Folwell’s opponent after the treasurer sought to force them to accept lower reimbursements from the state employees’ health plan.
The University of Virginia promised reforms but has stopped short of announcing them, while hospital giant VCU Health has freed tens of thousands from property liens.
Health plan network changes occur all the time as doctors retire, relocate or leave networks. Unfortunately, patients may be the last to find out about such changes because there are often few requirements that either providers or insurers inform them.
Hidden costs for ER visits and other fees could cost people thousands of dollars.
Molecular diagnostics are at the frontier of science, but insurance and billing questions create a minefield for patients.
Young adults without jobs that provide insurance find their options are limited and expensive. The problem is about to get worse.
Many Americans are shopping around for affordable options as the cost of health insurance soars. But some who hope to keep the same doctors and medications face a thicket of red tape and disruption after they switch plans.
Independent and rural hospitals are collaborating with their neighbors to shore up their finances instead of joining larger health systems to stay afloat.
The largest hospital chain in Massachusetts is offering a new AI-assisted telehealth tool to patients who need primary care. Mass General Brigham says this and other AI tools can help relieve staff burnout and worker shortages, but some primary care physicians in the MGB system see it as a way to avoid fixing structural problems.
Six months after agreeing to a $575 million settlement in a landmark antitrust case, Sutter Health has yet to pay a single dollar and now says the terms may be untenable, given the strain caused by the pandemic.
As the crowdsourced investigative series from KFF Health News approaches its eighth anniversary, “Bill of the Month” offers its top takeaways of 2025 to help patients manage, decipher, and even fight their medical bills.
Her doctor worried she had COVID-19 but couldn’t test her for it until she ruled out other things. That test cost a bundle.
Fourteen states now allow health coverage through state farm bureaus. Though they generally share many features of Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, they aren’t insurance. Neither are they typically subject to federal or state health insurance requirements, and the benefits may be less generous or predictable than those of Obamacare plans.
The costs of posttreatment care are forcing cancer survivors to make tough choices. GOP proposals to bring down health insurance costs won’t help people who need constant care and monitoring, health policy researchers and patient advocates say.
Despite billions of tax dollars and two decades of effort invested in improving health care data sharing, Americans’ medical records often remain siloed, leading to duplicate testing, increased costs, and wasted time for patients and doctors.
By writing in payment limits when signing hospital forms, patients might have leverage in negotiations over disputes that arise from surprise medical bills.
Sweeping changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplace next year have been proposed by the Trump administration that focus on making more insurance plans available with higher annual out-of-pocket costs but lower premiums.
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