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Signing the form means that if a problem can’t be amicably resolved, the patient or family agrees to take the dispute to a professional arbitrator rather than file a lawsuit.
After their release, former prisoners often don’t have a job and, therefore, don’t have health insurance. The health law’s Medicaid expansion could be changing that soon, though.
Millions of consumers embrace clinics’ convenience, but some physicians warn they’re no replacement for a family doctor.
Colorado is moving forward with broad consensus among the state’s decision makers on the minimum level of health coverage people will be required to carry beginning in 2014.
The Obama administration released a report Friday afternoon detailing the automatic cuts that would begin in January as part of deal to raise the debt ceiling made last summer by the administration and Congress, staff writer Mary Agnes Carey reports.
Michelle Andrews answers a reader question about the differences in practice and qualifications between doctors and nurse practitioners. She discusses the movement to require nurse practitioners to have a clinical doctoral degree although the 2015 timeframe she describes is a goal, rather than a requirement.
Officials say if the state wants to determine what benefits are available on all plans sold on the health exchanges, the governor needs to act by Sept. 30. But he wants to wait until after the presidential election.
In separate House and Senate hearings, Obama administration officials got an earful from members of Congress and industry and consumer representatives, who want more clarity about regulations called for in the health law.
Portland, Ore., is the largest American city that doesn’t add fluoride to its drinking water. Activists have been vocal, for and against a proposal to change that. The science shows that fears of side effects from small amounts of fluoride to protect teeth are unfounded.
The number of people without health insurance fell to 48.6 million last year, or 15.7 percent of the population, the first drop since 2007, according to new census numbers reported Wednesday.
