Latest KFF Health News Stories
Health Insurance: How Much More Should Older People Pay?
Maria Bishop, age 60, pays $500 a month for health insurance. Chris Denny, 27, pays $117. In most states, insurers can charge older customers far more than younger ones. As Congress wrestles with a health care overhaul, lawmakers are debating new limits that could narrow the difference.
What Can A Medical Billing Advocate Do For You?
When a claim is denied, an out-of-network fee is too costly, or an uninsured patient confronts an unclear or towering bill, an advocate may be able to help.
Code Blue: Out-of-Network Charges Can Spur Financial Emergency
When Gary Diego’s wife, Ellen, had bleeding in her brain, she ended up in an out-of-network emergency room. And he ended up with a huge bill. In a practice known as balance billing, insurers pay a portion of the out-of-network charges, and the rest is dumped on patients.
We live in a time when seemingly no subject is taboo. Yet, there remains one subject Americans seem unable to talk about in an honest and rational way: the inevitable decline of old age.
Medicare Advisers Raised Rates but Complained of Flawed System
Elevating the commission, known as MedPAC, isn’t about greasing the path for unpopular payment reductions, an obvious way to save money. It’s about rethinking payment altogether. Even as MedPAC advised upping payments, commissioners quietly insisted for years that Congress should scrap its abstruse, fragmented rules for paying providers.
Amid Stimulus Money, Community Health Centers Look For Their Post-Reform Role
Maisha Challenger never thought she’d have to set foot in a community health center. “I have been working my whole life so I usually am used to going to a doctor’s office,” she said. But after she lost her job as an education lobbyist – and the health insurance that came with it – she […]
For Dying and Seriously Ill Children, Hope For Better Care
When 14 year old Prince Jackson was diagnosed with a brain tumor, he was caught in a gray zone: public and private insurance doesn’t usually cover the palliative care he desperately needed. But his mother got help from a new program that provides services for seriously ill or dying children.
In Massachusetts, A Radical Idea For Changing How Doctors Are Paid
Some Massachusetts policymakers want to end the tradition of paying health care providers a separate fee for every service they provide. They say paying fees for every visit, test and procedure ordered is the main reason Massachusetts’ health care costs are the highest in the nation. This story comes from our partner NPR News
Will Emphasis on Prevention Bring Health Costs Down?
Obama and congressional leaders hope to reduce health care spending by promoting prevention to catch disease early. But some insurance and health officials say such efforts-although laudable-may not cut overall health costs.
Pharmaceutical Industry Keeps Hand In Health Care Bill: Interview With Billy Tauzin
NPR’s Linda Wertheimer talks with Billy Tauzin, president and CEO of PhRMA, the biggest trade association for the prescription drug industry.
Medicare data tell a different story about a public plan option.
Prevention Efforts May Not Reduce Health Care Costs
There are ways to reduce expensive diseases, but they must be deployed strategically. This story comes from our partner NPR News.
Transitional Care Cuts Hospital Re-Entry Rates, Costs
A study published earlier this year finds 1 out of 5 older patients who are discharged from a hospital will return within a month, costing Medicare about $17 billion a year. A program in Philadelphia assigns nurses to follow up with discharged patients in order to prevent readmission. This story comes from our partner NPR News.
Just Rewards? Healthy Workers Might Get Bigger Insurance Breaks
Consumer and patients’ groups criticize proposal that would let employers bestow bigger premium discounts on employees who embrace wellness programs.
What Counts as a Sacrifice in Health Reform?
Do the Democratic plans in Congress ask for changes that qualify as a “sacrifice”?
Lawmakers To Insurers: ‘Pony Up’ For Health Reform
As Senate Democrats scramble to finance an ambitious health care overhaul, they’re exploring ways to get extract money from the insurance industry, including taxing very costly policies. They’re also considering tacking a fee onto every new policy sold as a result of health reform or a flat tax on insurer profits.
Hospitals Divided Over Proposal For Medicare Payment Czar
Powerful hospital trade associations are opposing President Obama’s plan for an independent commission to determine how much Medicare pays doctors and hospitals. But certain “model” hospital systems – such as CHRISTUS Health – are breaking ranks and supporting the idea.
The House Bill Costs Far More Than $1 Trillion
House Democratic leaders have been selling the health care bill — now reported out by two of the three House committees to which it had been referred — as costing “only” $1 trillion over a decade. But that’s not really the whole story.
Local Hospitals and Doctors Join Forces to Improve Health Care, Restrain Costs
Even as an overhaul of the nation’s health care system gets bogged down in Congress, hospitals, doctors and administrators from around the country talk about how they have changed the way they operate to bolster health care in their home towns.
Blue Dogs’ Health Demands Get Boost From CBO
A leader of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative House Democrats says he and six others in the group would vote together to block the health overhaul bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee unless changes were made to slow the rate of growth of federal health care spending, a concern raised by CBO Director Elmendorf yesterday.
