Reimbursement

The nation's 1,200 nonprofit community health centers receive strong federal support to treat millions of uninsured residents, but still face financial challenges. Some are responding with an unusual strategy -- starting for-profit insurance plans.

Iowa and Nebraska's ACA-supported nonprofit, CoOportunity Health, has sold a lot more health plans in the two states than expected, through a mix of old and new strategies.

Aetna Better Health of Illinois, one of the insurer's Medicaid plans, will test the effect of providing smartphones to home care aides who assist Illinois residents under the state's Integrated Care Program.

With the cost of copayments for cancer pharmaceuticals varying widely, some patients end up skipping doses or stopping some treatments altogether, according to a new study.

If the Obamacare health insurance exchanges are not able to get a good spread of risk -- many more healthy people than sick -- the long-term viability of the program will be placed in great jeopardy.

"The man behind the curtain needs to be exposed" seems to be the sentiment echoed by many critics of today's hospital pricing strategy. Writing in a recent issue of JAMA, Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, a political economist based at Princeton University, put it more bluntly: "Until recently, healthcare in the United States was delivered behind the secure walls of a fortress that kept information on the prices charged for healthcare and the quality of that care opaque from public view."

National health spending in 2012 increased at a 3.7 percent rate to $2.8 trillion, the fourth consecutive year of slow growth, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in an analysis.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is proposing a number of new tweaks and more stringent requirements for Medicare Part D, hoping to save more than $1 billion over five years.

While many states are still trying to establish the core services of their health insurance marketplace, some exchanges are already setting a blueprint for business opportunities beyond a platform that enables shopping for and purchasing health coverage.

Recent court decisions in Michigan are making the issue of public employee benefits restructuring even more murky for states and local governments, and potentially adding more reasons for the Supreme Court to weigh in.