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.
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.
CMS launched a remodeled website Thursday that consolidates its eight online consumer tools to one platform. The redesigned site is an attempt by CMS to give users a more streamlined experience using its platform, called Compare tools.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he planned to meet with pharmaceutical companies this week regarding his so-called most- favored-nation executive order aimed at lowering drug prices paid by the U.S. federal government.
The White House announced a deal Thursday with Abbott Laboratories to produce 150 million rapid coronavirus tests that will allow users to obtain results in 15 minutes from a small card.
Telehealth is a bit of American ingenuity that seems to have paid off in the coronavirus pandemic. Medicare temporarily waived restrictions predating the smartphone era and now there’s a push to make telemedicine widely available in the future.