Air ambulance rides are literal lifesavers. But how much should they cost? In the ongoing, crowdsourced “Bill of the Month” investigation, Kaiser Health News and NPR received more than a dozen bills from people around the country on the hook for medevac helicopter rides that ranged from $28,000 to $97,000.
States serve as “laboratories of democracy,” as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said. And states are also labs for health policy, launching all kinds of experiments lately to temper spending on pharmaceuticals.
A proposed rule from the White House would make it harder for legal immigrants to get green cards if they have received certain kinds of public assistance — including Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies. Green cards allow them to live and work permanently in the United States.
More drug companies raised their prices in the past year than cut them, according to an analysis by The Associated Press published on Monday.
Spending on medical services for people enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans increased 44% between 2007 and 2016, according to researchers from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI).
The double whammy of rising healthcare costs and an aging population could cause a ripple of negative impacts across the U.S. economy.