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.
Employers and private insurance plans in 2020 paid hospitals 224% of what Medicare paid for the same services, with rates for inpatient and outpatient care varying widely from site to site, a new report from RAND finds.
Between 5.3 million and 14.2 million enrollees could lose Medicaid coverage next year as the Biden administration is expected to roll back the program’s continuous coverage provision, a new analysis finds. The analysis, released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, explores how much enrollment in Medicaid changed during the pandemic, including the impact of a ...
Something strange happened between the time Linda Griffith signed up for a new Medicare prescription drug plan during last fall’s enrollment period and when she tried to fill her first prescription in January. She picked a Humana drug plan for its low prices, with help from her longtime insurance agent and Medicare’s Plan Finder, an ...
In an era of rising inflation and trillion-dollar deficits, there appears to be growing bipartisan support for fiscal restraint. President Biden’s recent budget proposal featured more than $1 trillion in deficit-reducing policies. And his administration is now promising that the proposals once comprising the president’s Build Back Better agenda will be, at worst, deficit neutral. But despite ...
Unauthorized immigrants over age 49 who fall below certain income thresholds are now eligible for full coverage by Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides health insurance to low-income people.
For Medicare beneficiaries wondering whether their Part B premiums could be reduced, the waiting continues. More than three months after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra ordered a reassessment of this year’s $170.10 standard monthly premium — a bigger-than-expected jump from $148.50 in 2021 — it remains uncertain when a determination will come and ...
Medicare beneficiaries experiencing specific illnesses or circumstances could soon get Part B coverage outside the normal open enrollment periods under a proposed rule released Friday. Individuals who are impacted by an emergency or disaster, formerly incarcerated people and those subject to a health plan or employer error that prevented them from enrolling in Medicare on ...
California is still offering free covid testing to uninsured residents even though the federal government ran out of money to pay for it. While Congress debates whether to put more money into free testing, California is leaning on programs it already had in place: special state-based coverage for uninsured Californians, school testing, and free tests ...
Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups are making a push to convince the Biden administration to nix a controversial Trump-era rule that expanded the duration of short-term health plans. A collection of more than 40 House Democrats wrote to Department Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra earlier this week calling for the agency to ...
The federal Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2021 brings significant changes to the American health care and health insurance industries – as well as many other changes to unrelated sectors.