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WASHINGTON — Cara Suzannah Latil is living proof that the Affordable Care Act works — but also of why a central piece of the law is in turmoil.
Ms. Latil, 49, who works at a homeless shelter in Santa Fe, N.M., is one of millions of Americans who once found it difficult or impossible to get health insurance because they already had serious illnesses. Hepatitis C was ravaging her liver when she learned in 2014 that she also had breast cancer. Through the health care law, she was able to buy subsidized insurance that paid for all but $800 of her cancer surgery and radiation, she said, as well as tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of medications that cured her hepatitis. Continue reading
The required notices may be provided in several ways. Employers can provide them with their annual enrollment materials, mailings or electronically (with the employee’s permission). Employers can use the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) model notices or other notices that meet prescribed standards; however, the notices are required to be distributed no later than Oct. 14, 2016. Continue reading
It is a good deal for those people. But these seemingly generous coupons may be making drug costs higher for everyone. New research suggests that co-payment coupons can actually increase total health care spending by encouraging patients to choose more expensive drugs when there are lower-priced substitutes available. Those high costs can then boomerang back to patients in the form of higher insurance premiums.
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The federal government will choose health plans for hundreds of thousands of consumers whose insurers have left the Affordable Care Act marketplace unless those people opt out of the law’s exchanges or select plans on their own, under a new policy to make sure consumers maintain coverage in 2017.
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By: Jonah Engel Bromwich, NY Times, October 2016
After holding his newborn son for … Continue reading
Medicare, then, has a big incentive to use house calls. So do hospital systems that can capture the savings. One is Sutter Health in Northern California, which runs the successful Advanced Illness Management program. Another is the Veterans Affairs system, which established Home Based Primary Care in 1972. The program has the highest patient satisfaction rate of any Veterans Affairs service, has cut overall costs for patients in the program by nearly 12 percent and reduced hospitalization of them by one quarter. Continue reading
A growing number of U.S. workers are covered by health insurance that sticks them with a bigger share of the medical bill but also softens that blow by providing a special account to help with the expense.
Companies are turning more to these so-called consumer-directed health plans, which push patients to shop around for the best prices for care, because they can cost less than other types of coverage and help hold down future increases. Continue reading
Congress has advanced legislation to clarify that sports doctors’ medical malpractice insurance should follow them when they travel out of state with their teams.
The House of Representatives this week approved the Sports Medicine Licensure Clarity Act (US HR 921), which had 190 sponsors and was co-sponsored by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Cedric Richmond (D-La). Continue reading
