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.
After his second round of congressional questioning this week, Xavier Becerra appears on track to be confirmed as the next HHS secretary, even according to one of his detractors.
There is no health care issue hotter than drug pricing, Jonathon Jones told members of the National Association of Health Underwriters at their virtual Capitol Conference. Jones is a partner with the government relations consultant Peck Madigan Jones.
Employers can cut their health-care expenses by paying top medical providers a flat rate for a bundle of related services while offering incentives to the patients who use them, a study suggests. The study, published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, found that employers using a flat-rate approach run by Carrum Health saved about 11% ...
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package would trigger cuts to Medicare and other programs early next year unless Republicans agree to a waiver — a hurdle that could give the GOP leverage over Democrats’ slim majorities. The Congressional Budget Office said in a letter Thursday to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that Medicare would face ...
The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court not to hear arguments in two cases on its March calendar about the Trump administration’s plan to remake Medicaid by requiring recipients to work. The Biden administration has been moving to roll back those Trump-era plans and cited “greatly changed circumstances” in asking Monday that the cases be dropped ...
A group of Democratic state lawmakers introduced legislation Friday to create a single-payer health care system to cover all Californians, immediately defining the biggest health policy debate of the year and putting enormous political pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom.
President Joe Biden’s pick for health secretary, Xavier Becerra, told senators Tuesday that tackling the coronavirus pandemic will be his first priority if confirmed, but he also pledged to work to expand health insurance coverage, curb prescription drug costs and reduce racial and ethnic disparities in medical care.
A federal government watchdog is sounding the alarm that Americans’ growing enthusiasm for telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic has led to a worrying parallel: a “dramatic increase” in telehealth related fraud. The health department’s independent inspector general criticized policymakers for failing to put regulatory safeguards in place when they expanded access to telehealth in ...
While health plans reported sky-high profits in the early parts of 2020 due to care deferred under the pandemic, rising costs related to COVID-19 and more stable care utilization dinged their finances in the fourth quarter. Cigna was the most profitable of the major national insurers in the fourth quarter, bringing in $4.1 billion in ...
Two Democratic senators released their version of a public option health care plan Wednesday, setting the stage for this year’s debate over how best to expand coverage to the millions of people who are uninsured. The proposal from Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Tim Kaine (Va.) would create a government-run health care plan on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ...