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Health Insurance Headlines
How To Find Suitable Private Health Insurance
Private health insurance is the main source of health coverage for the majority of people in the United States. Approximately 58% of all Americans have private health care coverage. For elderly citizens and eligible children and families from low-income households, public programs are the primary source of health cover. Public programs include Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP...
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Study Finds Ending Individual Mandate Would Not Dramatically Hike Insurance Prices
A new RAND Corporation study concludes that eliminating a key part of health care reform that requires all Americans to have health insurance would sharply lower the number of people gaining coverage, but would not dramatically increase the cost of buying policies through new insurance exchanges. The study comes as the U.S...
Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Improved Access To Care For Young Adults Allowed To Stay On Parents' Health Insurance
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that laws permitting children to stay on their parents' health insurance through age 26 result in improved access to health care compared to states without those laws. This analysis indicates the potential positive impact of a key provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA)...
Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Although The Financial Burden Of Prescription Drugs Is Dropping, Costs Remain A Challenge For Many
The financial burden Americans face paying out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs has declined, although prescription costs remain a significant challenge for people with lower incomes and those with public insurance, according to a new RAND Corporation study...
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Justifying Insurance Coverage For Orphan Drugs
How can insurers justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient per year on "orphan drugs" - extremely expensive medications for rare conditions that are mostly chronic and life-threatening - when this money could provide greater overall health benefit if spread out among many other patients? Those spending decisions reflect the "rule of rescue," the value that o...
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Study Examines Misconceptions Of Who Picks Up Tab When Patients Walk Out
There are ways in which patients who leave the hospital against medical advice wind up paying for that decision. Being saddled with the full cost of their hospital stay, however, is not one of them. Insurance companies know this. Patients who walk out may know this. But many physicians, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, do not...
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Study Reveals 1 In 10 Canadians Cannot Afford Prescription Drugs
One in ten Canadians cannot afford to take their prescription drugs as directed, according to an analysis by researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. The study, published in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) is the first to examine the relationship between drug insurance and the use of prescription drugs in Canada...
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
In Hospital In-Patient Setting, Uninsured Receive Same Quantity, Value Of Imaging Services As Insured
Insurance status doesn't affect the quantity (or value) of imaging services received by patients in a hospital, in-patient setting, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Approximately 51 million Americans, or 16.7 percent of the population, were without health insurance for some or all of 2009...
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Kaiser Permanente Study Finds Continuous Health Coverage Essential For Patients Managing Diabetes
When patients with diabetes experience interruptions in health - insurance coverage, they are less likely to receive the screening tests and vaccines they need to protect their health. A new study finds that this is true even when patients receive free or reduced-cost medical care at federally funded safety net clinics...
Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Medicare And Private Insurance Spending Similar Throughout Texas
Variations in health care spending by Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) are similar throughout the state despite previous research, which found significant spending differences between the private and commercial sector in McAllen, Texas...
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Health Reform - Individual States Given More Flexibility And Freedom, USA
US states are being given more freedom and flexibility in the implementation of health reform as stipulated in the Affordable Care Act, which aims to make sure all US citizens have access to affordable, quality health insurance, according to a bulletin released by the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services)...
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Not All NJ Youngsters Are Equal When It Comes To Use Of Dental Services
When it comes to receiving dental care, New Jersey has its share of underserved children, according to a Rutgers study. In 2009, more than one-fifth of the state's children between 3 and 18 received no dental care within the previous year...
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
First-Of-Its-Kind Study Finds Public Health Insurance Coverage For Infants Is More Comprehensive And Costs Less Than Private Plans
In the fierce national debate over a new federal law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, it's widely assumed that private health insurance can do a better job than the public insurance funded by the U.S. government. But a first-of-its-kind analysis of newly available government data found just the opposite when it comes to infants covered by insurance...
Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Children With Special Health Care Needs
The first federally funded report to compare children with special health care needs to children without reveals 14 percent to 19 percent of children in the United States have a special health care need and their insurance is inadequate to cover the greater scope of care they require for optimal health...
Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
New Government Efforts Increase Chinese Health Coverage
Health care coverage increased dramatically in parts of China between 1997 and 2006, a period when government interventions were implemented to improve access to health care, with particularly striking upswings in rural areas, according to new research by Brown University sociologist Susan E. Short and Hongwei Xu of the University of Michigan...
Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
High Level Of Waste In Health Spending, Says Medicare And Medicaid Boss
Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame...
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Younger Americans' Health Disparity Gets Worse
There is a growing disparity between healthy and sick Americans born after 1980, caused by various factors, including a widening income gap, obesity which tends to hit certain income and ethnic groups more, access to health care services, and some other factors, researchers from Ohio State University wrote in American Sociological Review...
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Little Or No Help For Two Million Californians Reporting Mental Health Needs
Nearly 2 million adults in California, about 8 percent of the population, need mental health treatment, but the majority receive no services or inadequate services, despite a state law mandating that health insurance providers include mental health treatment in their coverage options, a new report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows...
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
USA Health Expenditure Costs So Much For So Little
The United States spends 17.4% of its GDP (gross domestic product) on health care, compared to 9.6% among the rest of the OECD countries, a new OECD report announced today. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) consists of 34 countries, nearly all of which are the richest countries in the world (with the exception of Mexico and Turkey)...
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Increase Of 50 Percent In Employer Health Insurance Premiums In Every State From 2003 To 2010
Premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance increased by 50 percent from 2003 to 2010, and the annual amount that employees pay toward their insurance increased by 63 percent as businesses required employees to contribute a greater share, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report that examines state trends in health insurance costs...
Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Health Insurance Non-Benefit Expenditures Unnecessarily Excessive
The U.S. remains on track to spend twice as much for health care as for food, yet millions are without insurance or uninsured. "Health insurance premiums also continue to rise on average another 9 percent in 2011," says Merton Bernstein, JD, leading health insurance expert and the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis...
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
"Don't Force Healthcare On Us" Say American People
Obama's grand plans for universal healthcare slipped further into trouble today with a survey conducted by Gallup indicating that 47% percent of those questioned favor repealing the Affordable Care Act. Only 42% said the law should remain, with 11% not having a strong opinion about whether the government should mandate and effectively force people to have health insurance...
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
News From The Annals Of Family Medicine: November/December 2011
Uninsured Patients Have Shorter Hospital Stays Patients without insurance have significantly shorter hospital stays than patients with insurance, raising worrisome concerns that hospitals may have increased incentive to release these patients earlier to reduce their own costs of uncompensated care...
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Heart Attack Patients - Eliminating Co-Payments Improves Outcomes, Costs And Medication Adherence
Eliminating co-payments is better for patients who have had a heart attack; their outcomes are better, they are more likely to adhere to their treatment regime, and costs are lower, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School revealed today in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine as well as the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions...
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
Children With Kidney Disease Faced With Racial Inequalities
Highlights Pediatric racial minorities are much less likely than whites to get kidney transplants before they need dialysis, regardless of their families' income...
Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 PST - Source:MedNewsToday
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