September 17, 2020
One of the overriding questions in the upcoming election is: What will happen to health care under a Trump or a Biden presidency? And what would a public option do to health insurance brokers? Read More
September 17, 2020
The ranks of the nation’s uninsured continued to grow last year, even before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic that’s devastated the economy, new federal data show. Read More
September 17, 2020
COVID-19 relief legislation that lets providers in some cases set their own prices on COVID tests has resulted in charges as high as $14,750, a new study finds. Read More
September 15, 2020
High prices, widening gaps in insurance coverage and racial disparities in outcomes are tied to wide state-level variation in health care performance that will likely be exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a sweeping new report from The Commonwealth Fund. Read More
September 15, 2020
President Trump signed an executive order Sunday that he says lowers prescription drug prices "by putting America first," but experts said the move is unlikely to have any immediate impact. Read More
September 15, 2020
Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the entertainment industry in March, Jeffrey Farber had a steady flow of day jobs in film and television, including work on “Hunters” and “Blue Bloods.” But when theaters, movies and TV shows stopped production, not only did Farber lose his acting income Read More
September 15, 2020
On HCA Healthcare’s second-quarter investor call, an analyst asked the for-profit chain’s chief financial officer an intriguing question: What’s the profitability of COVID-19 patients? Posed to most other health systems, such a query would have sounded absurd. But the Nashville-based hospital giant had just posted $1.1 billion in profit, up 38% from the prior-year period, even as elective procedures were largely shut down. Finance chief Bill Rutherford responded that coronavirus tends to prompt longer lengths of stay and higher acuity than typical hospitalized patients. “It’s too early to convert that to profitability,” he said. “Our focus is making sure we’ve got all the resources we need to care for those patients.” Read More
September 15, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has caused a sharp increase in unemployment across the country. The unemployment rate peaked at 14.7% in April and remained above 10% until very recently. In the United States, health insurance and employment often go hand-in-hand Read More
September 15, 2020
The Trump administration will not move forward with a proposed Medicaid rule that states, hospitals, insurers, patient advocates and members of both political parties warned could lead to massive cuts to the federal health care program for the poor. Read More
September 15, 2020
The unlikely portrait of Medicaid in the time of coronavirus looks like Jonathan Chapin, living with his wife and 11-year-old daughter in a gated community in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Read More