Health Insurance and Medicare News

Wider use of prescription generic drugs could save Medicare nearly $2 billion a year, researchers say.

The research, based on Medicare claims data from 2010-2016, found that the program’s payments for doctors’ work were, on average, $114,000 higher per doctor per year when billed by a hospital than when billed by a doctor’s independent practice.

The gap between prices was even higher for brand-name drugs, with U.S. prices 3.44 times more than those in the other countries.

Under a rule that kicked in Jan. 1, hospitals are required to make public the prices they negotiate with insurers. That’s a lot more information than was previously required, which was only the posting of “chargemasters” — the hospital-generated list prices that few consumers or health plans actually pay.

Those fears aren't unfounded. Among those with private health insurance, 68% have received unexpected medical bills and 33% couldn't pay them on time, while 23% said they haven't paid them yet.

Now that a Supreme Court’s hearing on a new lawsuit seeking to kill the Affordable Care Act is over, what’s next for the law? Court watchers say that pointed questions and comments about the suit from Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggest the court seems likely to issue a narrow ruling in the case.

Many of the US Supreme Court Justices raised questions about a lawsuit seeking to throw out the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during oral arguments on whether the law is unconstitutional.

he former vice president has sketched out a big health agenda: ramping up the federal response to COVID-19, boosting the Affordable Care Act, creating a new “public option” to cover uninsured Americans, and expanding Medicare and Medicaid. But the president-elect’s long to-do list on health is likely to face significant roadblocks in Congress and the courts, experts say.

During the 90-minute debate, the candidates sparred over the COVID-19 response and the future of the Affordable Care Act.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have greatly different plans for improving Americans' health care and for tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

Amy Coney Barrett, 48, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago since 2017, is President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court.

The percentage of families who had problems paying medical expenses in the previous year declined from about 20% in 2011 to 14% in 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Two million more Americans didn't seek health care from late 2016 through 2017 because they couldn't afford it and/or lacked insurance, new research shows.

DPC Frontier, which tracks the number of direct primary care practices nationally, estimates there are 1,219 practices in 48 states and Washington, D.C. They range in size from solo practitioners to corporate, multisite direct primary care organizations with thousands of doctors.

Nearly half of Americans (44%) said either they or a family member had received at least one surprise medical bill in the past, and most of them worried about how they would pay for it

Instead, the appeals court sent the case back to a federal district judge in Texas to "conduct a more searching inquiry" into which parts of the health law could survive without the insurance requirement.

There's been a lot of debate and discussion about a health insurance plan known as Medicare for All. But what does that really mean?

Even with Medicare coverage, older Americans with serious health conditions are often burdened by medical bills, a new study finds.

Genomic tests on cancer cells can help determine which types of treatment might work, and which ones might not. However, such testing can be expensive, and not all tests and related treatments are covered by health insurance, the researchers noted.

Meanwhile, about 27.5 million people (8.5% of the population) lacked health insurance for all of 2018, up from 7.9% in 2017, which was the first increase since the Affordable Care Act took full effect in 2014.

An exemption that allows immigrants to remain in the United States and avoid deportation while they or family members receive life-saving care has been scrapped by the Trump administration.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, claimed the No. 1 spot in the annual honor roll of best hospitals published today by U.S. News & World Report.

There's a severe organ shortage, which could impede the push for more transplants. In order to tackle that problem, the administration wants to ease financial challenges for living donors.

The median charge of an air ambulance trip was $39,000 in 2016, about 60% more than the $24,000 charged just four years earlier, researchers found.

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order he said would make it easier for consumers to get prices for hospital services.