Latest Morning Briefing Stories
Castellani: Health Law’s Cost-Sharing Could Limit Patient Access To Prescription Drugs
Enrollees in some of the health law’s most popular plans will face high cost-sharing requirements that the pharmaceutical industry says could keep patients from getting the drugs they need. Most silver plans in the online marketplaces, or exchanges, require patients to pay for prescription drugs as part of the plan’s deductible, while nearly all bronze plans do, according […]
Chemo Costs In U.S. Driven Higher By Shift To Hospital Outpatient Facilities
The price of cancer drugs has doubled in the past decade, with the average brand-name cancer drug in the U.S. costing $10,000 for a month’s supply, up from $5,000 in 2003, according to a new report by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, a health information, services and technology company. And those are just average prices; […]
More Health Insurance Equals Fewer Deaths In Massachusetts
Fewer people died in Massachusetts after the state required people to have health insurance, according to researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health. In each of the first four years of the state law, 320 fewer Massachusetts men and women died than would have been expected. That’s one life extended for every 830 newly […]
Colorado Redraws ACA Map To Cut Sky-High Ski Town Rates
Relief is in sight – and it won’t involve a lawsuit – for the four counties in Colorado that have the highest Obamacare health insurance premiums in the country. Local officials in the ski resort region in the mountains west of Denver had threatened to sue over the high rates. But on Friday Colorado Insurance Commissioner […]
Hospitals’ Purchase Of Doctors Leads To Higher Prices, Spending, Study Finds
A new study gives ammunition to what health economists and health insurers have argued for years: When hospitals buy physician practices, the result is usually higher hospital prices and increased spending by privately insured patients. The study, published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, was based on an analysis of 2.1 million hospital claims from workers […]
Study: Illegal Immigration Doesn’t Cause Overuse Of Health Care
Even before the Affordable Care Act was close to passing, it was clear that immigrants illegally living in the country would not be part of many of the law’s benefits. They are not allowed to buy health insurance from the online marketplaces, at least in part because opponents argued that these immigrants overburden emergency rooms and hospitals. But a study released […]
Doctors Think Others Often Prescribe Unnecessary Care
Three out of four physicians believe that fellow doctors prescribe an unnecessary test or procedure at least once a week, a survey released Thursday finds. The most frequent reasons that physicians order extraneous—and costly—medical care are fears of being sued, impulses to be extra careful and desires to reassure their own assessments of the patient, […]
Healthcare.gov Finished Strong Despite Rocky Start, Enrollment Data Show
Obama administration officials on Thursday predicted health insurance premiums would be stable next year despite concerns that not enough young and healthy people signed up through the online insurance exchanges. “The risk pool is fundamentally large and varied to support that kind of pricing…in every state,” said Mike Hash, director of the office of health […]
WellPoint Softens Forecast For Obamacare Rate Hikes
Welcoming a surge of young, last-minute enrollees, the biggest player in the health law’s insurance marketplaces on Wednesday tempered its prediction for substantial 2015 rate increases. Five weeks ago WellPoint executive Ken Goulet told analysts that premium increases for 2015 plans “will probably be in double-digit plus.” On Wednesday’s conference call to discuss first-quarter results, […]
Public Overwhelmingly Supports Law’s Contraceptive Mandate, Poll Finds
By a nearly two-to-one margin, the public supports the health law’s requirement that private health plans cover prescription birth control without cost-sharing, according to a poll released Tuesday. The provision, which is at the heart of a case being weighed by the Supreme Court, was endorsed 61 to 32 percent and was most popular among women, younger […]
Study: Costly Breast Cancer Treatment More Common At For-Profit Hospitals
Older breast cancer patients who received radiation treatment after surgery were more likely to undergo a more expensive and somewhat controversial type of radiation called brachytherapy if they got their care at for-profit rather than nonprofit hospitals, a new study reports. Among the oldest group studied — women in their 80s and early 90s who are […]
Oregon Raises White Flag Over Its Health Exchange
Oregon has been “all in” on health reform. Its embrace of the Affordable Care Act includes a very successful Medicaid expansion, a $2 billion federal experiment to show the state can save money by managing patients’ care better, and, of course, the state’s own online marketplace to sell Obamacare insurance. But that last point has been […]
First-Aid Training For Mental Health Could Aid At-Risk Veterans
When done right, first aid quickly identifies a problem and triages patients so the more urgent cases get treated first and followed up on. Now, with federal aid, that same strategy will apply to the pressing problem of veterans’ mental health. A push for new funding — and the use of existing funds — may soon make […]
Some Surprising Findings About Young Adults And Health Care
Insured or uninsured, young adults seem to spend about the same out-of-pocket for health care over the course of a year. With 2009 federal data on patient spending, researchers examined how often adults up to age 25 used and paid for health care. While an awful lot has changed since then – the Affordable Care […]
Consumers In Federal High-Risk Pools Get Special Enrollment Option For Marketplace
Participants in the federal high-risk health insurance pool who haven’t yet signed up for other coverage can qualify for a 60-day special enrollment period that begins May 1, the Obama administration announced late Thursday. In a notice posted on the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan website, officials said that participants in the high-risk program who have not […]
RAND: Medicare Should Weigh Cost In Coverage Decisions
The agency that oversees the Medicare program should be able to consider the cost effectiveness of drugs and medical devices when making coverage determinations, according to a new report by the RAND Corporation. But study authors acknowledge that this recommendation — a significant change from current practice in which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is barred from […]
How Are Insurers Responding To New Health Law Enrollees?
KHN’s Jay Hancock was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Monday morning to talk about how insurers are responding to the health law. Hancock said the 8 million new customers have insurers pondering who they, how sick they are and how the new enrollees may affect insurance rates in 2015.
Incomplete Face-To-Face Doctor Exams Put Home Health Agencies In Tight Spot
Medicare is paying billions of dollars to home-health providers without adequate documentation of patients’ needs by doctors, according to a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. The cost of caring for homebound patients is rising, and the government is trying to get a better grip on spending by […]
Biggest Insurer Shocked With Hepatitis C Costs
UnitedHealth Group spent $100 million on hepatitis C drugs in the first three months of the year, much more than expected, the company said Thursday. The news helped drive down the biggest insurance company’s stock and underscores the challenge for all health care payers in covering Sovaldi, an expensive new pill for hepatitis C. “We’ve […]
Hospitals Get Into Doctor Rating Business
After some doctors at University of Utah Health Care noticed scathing online reviews about themselves in 2012, the hospital system decided the best way to respond was by posting its patients’ ratings of physicians on the hospital’s own website. The hospital was already randomly surveying patients about their experiences with physicians. Now, when potential patients […]
