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.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is examining risk adjustment tactics that have led to overpayments to some Medicare Advantage plans, Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters Friday. Becerra said the agency has seen evidence of charges going beyond what would be necessary for MA plans using tactics such as up-coding. The remarks come ...
The extension would leave the flexibilities in place for 151 days after the end of the federal public health emergency, which currently expires in April but is expected to be extended into July.
Last spring, Lags Medical Centers, a sprawling chain of pain clinics serving more than 20,000 patients in California, abruptly shuttered amid a cloaked state investigation into “credible allegations of fraud.” Tens of thousands of patients were left scrambling for care, most of them low-income Californians covered by state and federal insurance programs. Many have struggled ...
This was supposed to be the year that low-income Californians could hire a doula to guide them through pregnancy and advocate for them in the hospital.
President Biden used the State of the Union not only to project optimism about the direction of the pandemic, but also to launch new efforts focused on mental health care and nursing home quality — two areas that have been shown to be deeply in need of reform over the last two years.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, he promised to lower prescription drug costs for all Californians. But now, as Newsom nears the end of his first term, his ambitious ideas — such as requiring California to make its own insulin and forging drug partnerships across state lines — have failed to get off ...
Preserving the employer tax exclusion topped the list of the National Association of Health Underwriters’ legislative priorities as its members visit Congress during today’s NAHU Capital Conference.
With prospects dim for the U.S. to adopt a single-payer “Medicare for All” program, health care reform advocates turned instead to an insurance plan designed by the government that could compete with private insurance plans sold on the health care exchanges. The idea behind this “public option” is that it could ultimately expand health care ...
Medi-Cal, the state’s safety net health program, isn’t free for everyone. More than half a million of California’s lowest-income children, pregnant individuals and working disabled adults are required to pay health insurance premiums, ranging from $13 a month to as much as $350. That may change this year under two proposals being floated in Sacramento. ...
The number of kids covered by Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program has soared to a record 40 million during the pandemic, aided by a congressional provision that bars states from disenrolling them during the public health emergency. However, at least 6.7 million children are at risk of losing that coverage and going uninsured for a period ...