Sep 03 Report: Aging population, more insured driving rise in health care spending By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press The nation's respite from troublesome health care inflation is ending, the government said Wednesday in a report that renews a crucial budget challenge for lawmakers, taxpayers, businesses and patients. Economic recovery, an aging society and more people insured under the… Continue reading
Jul 30 How Medicare came to be, thanks to Harry S. Truman By Dr. Howard Markel Forty-nine years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson found himself in Independence, Missouri. Although he was surrounded by a gaggle of politicians, distinguished guests and Secret Service agents, the president was armed only with a fountain pen, a bottle of ink… Continue reading
Jun 27 Watch Fixing the disconnect between Medicare and Medicaid to serve the most vulnerable Americans By PBS News Hour Providing long term care at a reasonable cost — especially for low-income Americans who are elderly or have disabilities — has long been a challenge in the U.S. In California, long term care providers are coordinating in order to tackle… Continue watching
Jun 23 Hospitals face punishment in Medicare crackdown By Jordan Rau, Kaiser Health News During a hernia operation, Dorothea Handron’s surgeon unknowingly pierced her bowel. It took five days for doctors to determine she had an infection. By the time they operated on her again, she was so weakened that she was placed in… Continue reading
Jun 16 How one entrepreneur found success over pancakes By Eric Whitney, Kaiser Health News A computer programmer and a kid in a Batman suit walk into a pancake house...it sounds like a joke, but it really happened, and now the programmer, Dave Vockell, has a new product to bring to market. It's an app… Continue reading
May 12 High price tag puts Hepatitis-C cure out of reach for boomers on Medicare By Richard Knox, NPR A growing number of people who got infected in the 1960s through the 1990s have now "used up" the infection's latency period, notes Dr. Camilla Graham of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, "which is why we're now seeing this… Continue reading
Apr 10 Medicare officials hope release of data will help identify waste and combat fraud By Jordan Rau, Kaiser Health News Medicare’s release Wednesday of millions of records of payments made to the nation’s doctors comes as the government is looking to find more cost-efficient ways to pay physicians, particularly specialists. Continue reading
Apr 09 Watch Medicare data raises fresh questions about concentrated payout for few doctors By PBS News Hour Continue watching
Apr 09 Documents reveal Medicare's top-paid doctors earned millions By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Serdar Tumgoren, Associated Press Medicare paid a tiny group of doctors $3 million or more apiece in 2012. One got nearly $21 million. Those are among the findings of an Associated Press analysis of physician data released Wednesday by the Obama administration, part of… Continue reading
Mar 31 Here's why it might be a good idea to retire in Alaska By Elizabeth Shell How does you state rank in terms of financial pressure for workers who want to one day retire? We mapped and charted the data. Continue reading