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.
Kim Motl doesn’t work in the health insurance industry. But her friends and neighbors do. So when she saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Motl pressed the Democratic presidential candidate about her “Medicare for All” plan, which would replace private insurance with a government-run system.
Spending on health care in the state now exceeds $400 billion a year — more than $10,000 per person. That has led to an explosion of political attention, just as agriculture and industrial activity dominated California's political landscape in their heydays.
Any day now, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans could rule the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. At least it seemed that two of the three appeals court judges were leaning that way during oral arguments in the case, State of Texas v. USA, in July.
Much of what we accept as legal in medical billing would be regarded as fraud in any other sector. I have been circling around this conclusion for the past five years, as I’ve listened to patients’ stories while covering health care as a journalist and author.
Three years ago, 3.9 million Americans received a plain-looking envelope from the Internal Revenue Service. Inside was a letter stating that they had recently paid a fine for not carrying health insurance and suggesting possible ways to enroll in coverage.
More than $12 billion is at stake for the nation’s health insurers Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears another Affordable Care Act case.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill that would let Medicare negotiate prices with drug companies would save the government $456 billion over ten years, according to an analysis released Tuesday.
Health care spending grew last year but shrunk as a portion of overall spending. A new analysis published in Health Affairs by Micah Hartman, a statistician in the CMS Office of the Actuary, finds that national health care spending increased by 4.6 percent in 2018 to $3.6 trillion, or 17.7 percent of the overall economy. That’s down from 17.9 percent the previous year.
Prices for prescription drugs edged down by 1% last year, a rare result driven by declines for generics and slow, low growth in the cost of brand-name medications, the government said Thursday.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma pushed back on hospitals' resistance to publishing payer-negotiated prices, as now mandated by a federal rule.