Medicare & Medicaid
News articles in this section include actions by federal regulators like the CMS and HHS, as well as information on Medicare and state Medicaid coverage and benefits.
Congress and the Trump administration are revamping Medicare to provide extra benefits to people with multiple chronic illnesses, a significant departure from the program’s traditional focus that aims to create a new model of care for millions of older Americans.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said Thursday that "Medicare for All" proposals should be “evaluated” if Democrats win back the House this year, adding “it’s all on the table."
California's General Assembly has passed a bill to become the first state to extend Medicaid coverage to immigrants, regardless of their status.
The Trump administration is embarking on a basic change to Medicaid that for the first time evaluates states based on the health of millions of Americans and the services they use through the vast public insurance program for the poor.
In the past month, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has thrown her support behind two liberal health care bills. Shortly thereafter, her re-election campaign began airing a statewide ad touting her embrace of the policies promoted by the two bills she co-sponsored.
The sprawling Alera Group, which has been rapidly expanding its employee benefits business through a series of acquisitions, has added four more brokerages. The deals, which were closed May 1st, expanding the company’s presence in California, the Midwest and the eastern U.S., giving it offices in more than 65 U.S. locations.
A new research letter reports that doctors who received free meals and other kinds of payments from pharmaceutical companies tended to prescribe more opioid painkillers to their patients over the course of a year. Meanwhile, doctors who didn't get such freebies cut back on their opioid prescriptions.
Health insurers are seeking lofty rate hikes for 2019 individual coverage as they grapple with new obstacles in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, including the zeroed-out mandate penalty and the potential influx of skimpy insurance policies.
The coupons typically offer patients with commercial insurance a break on their copayment for brand-name drugs, often reducing their out-of-pocket costs to what they would pay for inexpensive generic drugs.
Medicare will require hospitals to post their standard prices online and make electronic medical records more readily available to patients, officials said Tuesday.