Beware Of Higher Charges If You Go To An Out-Of-Network Emergency Room
The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from charging more for out-of-network emergency care, but your bill could be higher if you're admitted to the hospital.
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The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from charging more for out-of-network emergency care, but your bill could be higher if you're admitted to the hospital.
Federal law allows states to seize assets, such as homes, after a Medicaid enrollee has died to help cover the costs of the program's spending on basic health services for people 55 years and older.
Fear keeps many patients and doctors from talking to each other about end-of-life care. One company, hired by insurers, has made a rather unusual business fostering those conversations.
Exemptions allow medical bill-sharing groups to help members pay costs - without Affordable Care Act insurance.
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Proposition 45 would give the state insurance commissioner authority to reject rate hikes, but some experts suggest this could complicate the online insurance marketplace.
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The alphabet soup that distinguishes different types of insurance plans is supposed to help guide consumers, but instead the choices are becoming very confusing.
Consumers in most other states have more information about, and control over, health insurance prices and plans.
Some fear helping some people with their bills might keep them from getting government-subsidized insurance plans.
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The National Business Group on Health also found, based on 136 large employers' responses, a continued move toward high-deductible, "consumer-directed" plans.
Dr. Robert Galvin, who helps executives at 50 companies purchase health care for employees, tells KHN that workers must become savvier consumers.
KHN's consumer columnist Michelle Andrews explores a divorced mother's efforts to get her ex-husband to keep their sons on his plan, one senior's problems getting Medicare to cover his antibiotic infusion at home and what earnings one reader will have to count when applying for premium subsidies.
Vermont plays the maverick again in trying to be the first state to implement a single-payer health care system.
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