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Health providers may bill however they choose — including in ways that could leave patients with unexpected bills for “free” care. Routine preventive care saddled an Illinois couple with his-and-her bills for “surgical trays.”
For the patient, it was a quick and inexpensive virtual appointment. Why it cost 10 times what she expected became a mystery.
Convenient as it may be, beware of getting your blood drawn at a hospital. The cost could be much higher than at an independent lab, and your insurance might not cover it all.
A new, rapid genetic test shows promise in increasing diagnoses and improving treatment for some children with rare genetic conditions. Many insurers won’t cover it, but Florida's Medicaid program is among those that see benefits — and, potentially, savings.
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
To drive down costs, insurers are bypassing hospital system pharmacies and delivering high-priced infusion drugs, including some used in chemotherapy, via third-party pharmacies. Smarting from losing out on billing for those drugs, hospitals and clinics are trying to convince states to limit this practice, known as "white bagging."
A new report boosts the estimated number of people enrolled in plans whose members — usually brought together by shared religious beliefs — pay one another’s health costs.
California Healthline has learned that a coalition of doctors, hospitals, insurers, and community clinics want to lock in a tax on health insurance companies to draw in extra Medicaid funding. It also wants to make the tax permanent.
A U.S. District Court ruling overturned the section of the Affordable Care Act that makes preventive health services — from colonoscopies to diabetes screenings and more — available at no cost to consumers.
Any day now a conservative federal judge in Texas could upend the national abortion debate by requiring the FDA to rescind its approval of mifepristone, a drug approved in the U.S. more than 20 years ago that is now used in more than half of abortions nationwide. Meanwhile, a controversial study on masks gets a clarification, although it may be too late to change the public impression of what it found. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week they think you should read, too.
States are turning to the big health insurance companies to keep Medicaid enrollees insured once pandemic protections end in April. The insurers’ motive: profits.
Big Pharma may be moving on from squeezing diabetes patients on insulin prices, but it’s the arbitrators that jack up prices for those who can least afford them.
In a surprise decision, U.S. officials yield to insurance industry demands — at least for now.
A car crash left a woman in need of oral surgery, but her health insurance wouldn’t cover it. Her ongoing fight shows podcast host Dan Weissmann the weird way insurance treats teeth and reveals a big problem in the Obamacare marketplace.
Some insurers and employers are tapping into assistance programs meant for individual patients. The concern: Some costly drugs could be harder for patients to access.
Health insurers and health care systems across the country are violating disability rights laws by sending medical bills that blind and visually impaired people cannot read, a KHN investigation has found. By hindering the ability of blind Americans to know what they owe, some bills get sent to debt collections.
Taxpayers had to foot the bills for care that should have cost far less, according to records released after KHN filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The government may seek to recover up to $650 million as a result.
The nation’s largest private health system, HCA Healthcare, has faced years of scrutiny over its share of emergency room patients who are admitted to the hospital. And now U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey, is calling for a federal investigation, prompting an escalating defense by the hospital system, based in Nashville, Tennessee.
A youth mental health crisis and a shortage of therapists and other care providers who take insurance are pushing many families into financial ruin. But it's rarely acknowledged as medical debt.
Texas is at least the 12th state to settle with St. Louis-based Centene Corp. over allegations that it overcharged Medicaid prescription drug programs.
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