That sure is a lot of paper clips. Obamacare is set to add more than a quarter-of-a-trillion—that’s trillion—dollars in extra insurance administrative costs to the U.S. health-care system, according to a new report out Wednesday. (Tweet this) The $273.6 billion in additional insurance overhead represents an average of of $1,375 per newly insured person, per ...

WASHINGTON — The government relies too heavily on advice from the American Medical Association in deciding how much to pay doctors under Medicare, and the decisions may be biased because the doctors have potential conflicts of interest, federal investigators say in a new report. This reliance on the association, combined with flaws in data collected by the ...

Employer groups and insurers are pushing to keep businesses with 51 to 100 workers exempt from a provision of the federal health law that they say could significantly increase their costs. For these midsize employers, the Affordable Care Act’s requirements for what health plans must cover—and how they are priced—are set to take effect on ...

Experts are warning that state Medicaid agencies struggling with budget issues could have a difficult time managing the Obama administration’s newly proposed Medicaid managed care rule,Modern Healthcare reports (Dickson, Modern Healthcare, 5/27). Background CMS on Tuesday released the proposed rule, which aims to create more standardized practices across states and align managed care standards with ...

On Monday, CMS publicly released new online data that reveal hospitals’ Medicare charges and payments, as well as what doctors billed, in 2013, Modern Healthcare reports (Herman, Modern Healthcare, 6/1). Background The data were unveiled at the Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C. (CMS release, 6/1). It is the third straight year that Medicare has ...

Dozens of health insurers say higher-than-expected care costs and other expenses blindsided them this year, and they’re going to have to hike premiums for individual policies well-beyond 10 percent for 2016. The proposed double-digit hikes would apply to plans sold on the health insurance exchanges created under President Barack Obama’s law, as well as individual ...