Author: Scott Welch
Some 70% of people want to age at home, yet only 10% have long-term care insurance, a recent HCG Secure/Arctos Foundation study found. Furthermore, about half of respondents had no idea how much in-home care would cost.
Newly released federal audits reveal widespread overcharges and other errors in payments to Medicare Advantage health plans for seniors, with some plans overbilling the government more than $1,000 per patient a year on average. Summaries of the 90 audits, which examined billings from 2011 through 2013 and are the most recent reviews completed, were obtained ...
For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine. Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. It’s a continuation of a troubling ...
Starting next year the highest-grossing drug of all time, AbbVie ABBV -0.56%decrease; red down pointing triangle‘s Humira, will finally face competition from copycat biologics in the U.S. Yet the makers of the complex generics known as biosimilars won’t necessarily be the biggest winners. The top beneficiaries could instead be the middlemen such as Cigna CI 0.29%increase; green up pointing triangle and CVS Health CVS 0.16%increase; ...
New legislation seeks to improve the Medicare & You handbook in the latest attempt by Congress to scrutinize how Medicare Advantage plans are marketed to seniors. The legislation introduced Tuesday by Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., would add new information to the handbook on health plan choices and supplemental insurance. It is ...
Private payers can just say “no.” So can Medicare. Medicaid, however, must say “yes.” Medicaid must provide coverage for any medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even those medications approved under the FDA’s accelerated approval program (AAP), which are often very expensive medications that lack complete clinical data, according to a special commentary in ...
For more than 2 decades, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has produced an invaluable annual survey of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). This year’s report, which the authors summarized in a companion article published in Health Affairs, provides insights into key characteristics of the insurance model that most working-age Americans and their families rely on to access medical services.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, bringing with it opportunities for festivities with family and friends. But this year’s holiday happenings also risk attracting some unwelcome guests, as respiratory viruses and the coronavirus could find fertile ground to spread, especially in crowded indoor settings.
About 22,000 nurses and nurse practitioners reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente on a new four-year contract that includes provisions for a 22.5% raise and increased staffing.
While the name of the game in employee perks nowadays is flexibility, employees are searching for other perks, too. In particular, many workers are now planning to take advantage of voluntary benefits like critical illness, hospital indemnity, disability income, and accident insurance.