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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
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
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.
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.
The Congressional Budget Office now expects the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which finances Medicare Part A, to become insolvent by 2024, two years earlier than previously forecast due to the effects of COVID-19.