Month: January 2022
After roughly a year of requiring hospitals to publicly post their prices, the top federal health regulator has delivered hundreds of warnings but has not yet seen fit to issue any civil monetary penalties. As of an early December tally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had issued roughly 335 warning notices to ...
Home COVID tests are now available at no cost to most Americans, as part of the Biden administration’s effort to increase testing around the United States. Folks can buy home tests online or in stores and be fully reimbursed by their private insurance, without any copays or deductibles. The White House also plans to distribute 1 ...
For companies that were waiting to hear from the U.S. Supreme Court before deciding whether to require vaccinations or regular coronavirus testing for workers, the next move is up to them. Many large corporations were silent on Thursday’s ruling by the high court to block a requirement that workers at businesses with at least 100 employees be ...
Intentions were good, but the new federal rules that were supposed to make hospital bills easier to figure out are instead doing little to help. Hospital prices and reimbursements have long been a riddle wrapped around a cipher. Why the same surgical procedure, aspirin, or IV vary so much in cost between facilities, health systems, ...
Even if enough people build natural immunity to Covid-19 by catching the highly contagious Omicron variant, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci said it is too soon to say if this will spell an end to the pandemic. On Monday, Dr. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for Covid, was asked at the online World Economic Forum ...
Most Medicare beneficiaries in Parts A and B are expected to be enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans by next year, but spending on the plans is going to continue to outpace traditional fee-for-service, a congressional advisory panel found. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a panel that makes recommendations to Congress on Medicare policy, released ...
Surging coronavirus cases in the United States, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, have prompted renewed recommendations from health experts that the public should consider wearing more protective face coverings, such as N95 or KN95 masks. President Biden also said his administration is working on making such higher-quality masks more widely available. “Next week, we’ll announce how we are making ...
More than 28.5 million seniors and people with disabilities were enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan as of Jan. 1, an 8.8% increase from the same time in 2021, according to new federal data analyzed by Axios. Why it matters: Enrollment in the controversial MA program continues to grow, and based on prior full-year trends, enrollment in ...
California would enact a sweeping, first-in-the-nation universal healthcare plan under a proposal unveiled Thursday by a group of state Democratic lawmakers, providing health services to every resident and financed by a broad array of new taxes on individuals and businesses.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to extend Medi-Cal coverage to all low-income, undocumented adults, a historic expansion that would make California the first state in the nation to provide universal health care access for all residents regardless of legal status.