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.
Lobbyists for drugmakers, pharmacists and large employers are blanketing Congress with calls, emails and advertisements, pressing lawmakers to rein in pharmaceutical middlemen, who they say are behind soaring drug costs.
Dive Brief: * New government data puts in stark relief how dramatically telehealth use exploded last year, with the share of Medicare visits conducted virtually skyrocketing from just 840,000 in 2019 to 52.7 million in 2020. * That’s a nearly 63-fold increase. Specialists like behavioral health providers saw the highest telehealth use relative to their ...
The California Medical Association (CMA) and the California Hospital Association (CHA) today sent a joint letter to the California Congressional Delegation, urging immediate action to eliminate or delay the Medicare payment cuts that are scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2022. “California’s hospitals and physicians continue to provide critical health services to their patients and ...
Provider groups are urging the Biden administration to walk back several provisions in a surprise billing rule, including requirements for providers to offer good-faith estimates to certain patients and what they deem a flawed process for determining out-of-network charges. Providers and payers submitted comments on the interim final rule released back in October. The rule ...
Dive Brief: * Hospital groups are kicking their lobbying up a notch as 2022 approaches, looking to fend off scheduled cuts to Medicare’s provider pay. * Major hospital lobbies sent a letter on Monday to congressional leaders urging them to extend the moratorium on Medicare sequester cuts, and prevent the pay-as-you-go sequester from taking effect. ...
Of all the “bitter disappointments” he had as president, Harry Truman once wrote, the “one that has troubled me most, in a personal way,” was the failure to enact a national program that would assure all Americans “a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.” More than 75 years after Truman first ...
A Louisiana federal court has granted 14 states’ bid for a preliminary injunction that not only halts a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rule requiring COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare workers in their own states but across the entire nation. In the memorandum ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote that ...
Open enrollment for Medicare goes from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 each year, when Medicare beneficiaries choose their coverage for the next plan year. As Medicare enrollees contemplate their choices for 2022, here are overall Medicare changes to keep in mind.
Hospital groups are asking lawmakers to prevent billions of dollars in Medicare pay reductions next year as part of a government funding bill that’s on Congress’s agenda for this week. The Coalition to Protect America’s Health Care, which represents hospital groups, announced yesterday it will launch a television ad campaign in Washington, D.C., urging Congress ...
Democrats and Republicans are crystal clear in polls that they want government to be allowed to negotiate down high drug prices. Americans pay nearly three times as much for drugs as patients in dozens of other countries.