The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
With states reducing the number of psychiatric beds, mentally ill patients often languish in hospital emergency rooms for several days, sometimes longer. At most, they get drugs but little counseling, and the environment is often harsh.
Nearly half of the states have received some type of help, including 11 states with Republican governors.
RAND Health Vice President and Director Arthur Kellermann, M.D., disputes the way his organization’s research was depicted in a recent column by John Goodman about Medicaid. Kellerman notes the study in question was designed to examine health care quality, not to determine the value of different types of insurance.
A majority of Americans give the country’s health system barely passing grades. Most people choose a hospital based on someone’s personal experience than looking at quality ratings. Yet when it comes to surgeons, people are evenly split on whether experience or data is the best guide.
Alec Vachon, who once worked for Republican Sen. Bob Dole and the Senate Finance Committee, says the GOP premium support proposal will run into trouble if funding doesn’t meet seniors’ needs to buy insurance.
The centers, designed to help low-income and uninsured people, offer an affordable option for care, but it can also be tough to get an appointment.
Pennsylvania has long been a laboratory for innovation in providing health coverage to the uninsured. But this legacy came crashing down earlier this year when 42,000 adultBasic enrollees lost their health insurance. The program’s termination was explained as a “fiscal reality,” but this fiscal decision is not a sound investment in the state’s future.
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey talks with Jackie Judd about an 11th hour spending deal reached late last week that would remove some minor provisions of the health care law and require that the Senate vote on two measures the House already has approved
A program in St. Louis is giving hospice patients one more way to say goodbye to their loved ones – using a series of volunteers trained to help them tell their stories.
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey talks with CQ HealthBeat’s Rebecca Adams about the fiscal 2012 budget plan from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. It would dramatically change Medicaid and Medicare.
The $100 million program, part of the federal health overhaul, seeks to help Medicaid enrollees quit smoking or keep weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels in check. But there is limited evidence that these reward programs work.
Mark Bertolini knows the insurance industry inside out. Both he and his son have had life-threatening health crises. He says he wouldn’t qualify for an individual policy and talks with KHN about how Aetna is reacting to the health law.
Policy issues including a number of controversial health-related items are adding to the difficulties faced by lawmakers as they try to reach agreement on legislation to provide funding to avert a federal government shutdown.
If the current budget standoff on Capitol Hill leads to a shutdown of the federal government on Friday, recipients of the Medicare and Medicaid health programs won’t have to worry. At least not for a while.
Remember all those allegations from Republicans that the Affordable Care Act would inevitably lead to health care rationing? It turns out the same might be true of the House GOP budget plan for Medicare.
Rosemary Gibson, who has led national efforts to improve health care quality and safety, is concerned about 32 million newly insured Americans being exposed to too much treatment.
Much has been made of the health insurance exchanges in Utah and Massachusetts and whether they represent opposite points of a continuum of what exchanges can and should provide for consumers and small businesses. But is that really true or is the reality far more nuanced?
Congressional critics want to repeal the CLASS act. But without it, millions of disabled adults, frail seniors and their families will be left with only Medicaid’s tattered safety net.
Health care entitlement programs are targeted for major overhauls under the House GOP budget proposal, says the Congressional Budget Office.
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey talks with CQ HealthBeat’s Rebecca Adams about the fiscal 2012 budget plan from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. It would dramatically change Medicaid and Medicare.
