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.
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.
Saturday is the deadline for most people with Medicare coverage to sign up for private drug and medical plans for next year. But members of Congress, health care advocates and insurance agents worry that enrollment decisions based on bad information from the government’s revamped, error-prone Plan Finder website will bring unwelcome surprises.
President Donald Trump has personally tried to settle the long-running feud between his two top health appointees, telling his health secretary to fix the relationship with his Medicare chief, said three individuals with knowledge of the situation.
Very few beneficiaries with Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part D stand-alone coverage voluntarily switch plans during open enrollment, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s flagship proposal to curb prescription drug prices, the “Lower Drug Costs Now Act” ― H.R. 3 ― could come up for a vote in the chamber this month. The measure would allow Medicare to negotiate prices for a limited number of drugs, cap what seniors pay out-of-pocket ….
Hospital groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration’s price transparency rule that requires hospitals to disclose negotiated rates with insurers.
Former vice president Joe Biden released a plan Wednesday to raise $3.2 trillion in taxes over 10 years to pay for his domestic spending proposals, including on health care and climate, as he seeks to cast himself as the fiscal moderate in the Democratic presidential primary amid pressure from his liberal rivals.