Health Jul 20 Is urgent care always a lower-cost alternative to the emergency room? Sallyann Johnson considers herself a pretty savvy health care consumer. When she fell and injured her hands and wrists, she didn’t head for an expensive emergency room, choosing an urgent care clinic near her Milwaukee home instead.
Health Jan 20 Once, same-sex couples couldn’t wed; now, some employers say they must Until recently, same-sex couples could not legally marry. Now, some are finding they must wed if they want to keep their partner’s job-based health insurance and other benefits.
Health Sep 10 Employer-provided health care costs saw only modest increases in 2014 While both critics and supporters of the Affordable Care Act are likely to find fodder for their positions, the report portrays 2014 as a relatively stable year for employer coverage, with little change in the type of plans offered or…
Health Aug 18 Hospitals reconsider free healthcare for those who could now be insured If a patient is eligible to purchase subsidized coverage through the law’s online marketplaces but doesn’t sign up, should hospitals “provide charity care on the same level of generosity as they were previously?” asks Peter Cunningham, a health policy expert…
Health Jul 28 Marketplace shoppers discover new health plans have many limitations Nationally, regulators and insurance agents are inundated with complaints, while state lawmakers are considering rules to ensure consumers’ access to doctors. For 2015 plans which will be on sale beginning in November, the federal Department of Health and Human Services…
Nation Jul 09 Lawsuit accuses Anthem Blue Cross of misleading ‘millions’ California insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross misled “millions of enrollees” about whether their doctors and hospitals were participating in its new plans, and failed to disclose that many policies wouldn’t cover care outside its approved network, according to a…
Health Jun 30 Many hospitals struggle to understand their own cost data “To think that health care is this ‘ginormous’ business that doesn’t understand costs is mind-blowing,” said Vivian Lee, senior vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah, an academic medical center with four hospitals and 1,330 physicians. In…
Health Jun 19 Survey finds most Americans who purchased health care on exchanges were uninsured Nearly six in 10 Americans who bought insurance for this year through the health law’s online marketplaces were previously uninsured—most for at least two years, according to a new survey that looks at the experiences of those most affected by…
Health Jun 17 Insurers take up fight against rising chemotherapy costs Some cancer patients and their insurers are seeing their bills for chemotherapy jump sharply, reflecting increased drug prices and hospitals’ push to buy oncologists’ practices and then bill at higher rates.