Health Insurance and Medicare News & Features

The problem, said one expert, is that by nature, ads tell consumers that the product is "good." Prescription drug ads mention side effects -- in a quick voiceover in a TV commercial, for instance -- but they do not quantify the benefits versus risks.

The cost of a two-pack EpiPen injector has increased from around $100 in 2007 to between $300 and $600 today. The list price for Lantus brand insulin increased by 49 percent in 2014, even though the product has been on the market for more than a decade.

Medicare and Medicaid are fine, but the food safety component of the Food and Drug Administration and bio-threat surveillance done by the Department of Homeland Security are among the public health functions feeling the pinch.

One out of 5 people aged 50 to 64 decided to stay in their current job rather than change jobs or retire, just to keep their employer-provided health insurance.

While readmissions for heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia have declined, doctors and policy makers have expressed concerns that the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) may harm patient care and increase after-discharge death rates.

The ruling was made in a case that was launched by Republican governors and state attorneys general in 20 states and centered on whether people were still compelled to buy coverage even after Congress reduced the penalty for not having coverage to zero dollars.

Managing electronic health records is creating “technology-related stress” for physicians, and primary care doctors are most at risk, according to a new survey.

About 276,000 more children are among the uninsured, a new report finds. Though the uptick is statistically small, it is striking because uninsured rates usually decrease during periods of economic growth.

An investigation by WebMD and Georgia Health News finds that hospitals are breaking a law that requires them to provide emergency care to patients who need it, sometimes with deadly results.

WebMD and Georiga Health News used documents and data obtained through Open Records requests along with interview for its investigation on hospital EMTALA violations.

Pregnant women are among the groups of patients that may not get adequate care when they go to a hospital emergency room, in violation of a federal law created to protect them. .

A federal law guarantees a certain level of medical care to anyone who comes to an emergency department, including a proper screening exam to determine if a patient has a medical emergency.

Shereese Hickson’s doctor wanted her to try the infusion drug Ocrevus for her multiple sclerosis. Even though Hickson is trained as a medical billing coder, she was shocked to see two doses of the drug priced at $123,019, with her share set at $3,620.

Between 2011 and 2015, your risk of catching an infection while you were in the hospital dropped 16 percent, researchers say.

Residents of for-profit nursing homes have almost twice the risk of health problems linked to neglect compared with people who live in nonprofit homes, researchers say.

Despite being washed with industrial detergent in high, disinfecting temperatures, hospital sheets still were contaminated with the potentially life-threatening C. difficile bacteria, researchers found. And those sheets spread the bacteria to uncontaminated ones.

Privacy curtains in hospital rooms became more contaminated the longer they stayed in place, and by the 14th day, 88 percent tested positive for MRSA bacteria, a serious threat to patients, a new study says.

About 70 percent of all breaches occurred with health care providers, compared with only 13 percent of breaches taking place at health insurance companies, the study findings showed.

In a new study, almost 30 percent of doctors surveyed said they had recorded a visit for a patient's use. And about 19 percent of U.S. adults said they'd done so themselves -- usually after asking the doctor's permission.

Doctors rank their top hospitals in an annual survey by Medscape.

Prices can be expected to rise about 20 percent for drugs facing a shortage, but only about 9 percent for medicines in good supply, researchers report.

The new venture plans to have its first medicines on the market by mid- to late 2019, the AP reported.

“I don’t feel any consumer should have to go through this,” says Drew Calver, who faced a life-changing surprise bill from an Austin hospital after a heart attack last year. After attention as a Bill of the Month patient, he paid the hospital $332. But he worries about other patients with surprise bills.

About 8.3 million Americans now carry health insurance plans purchased through an Obamacare state-based marketplace, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

The median cost of medical education at a private medical school is $59,605 per year, and the median current debt of a graduating student is $202,000.