Reimbursement
In the states with largest uninsured populations, the stakes are high for this fall's insurance exchange enrollment -- the difference between the healthcare status-quo and improvements in healthcare access and sustainability.
A new healthcare environment where value is more important that volume requires a business model that incentivizes all providers on the care-delivery continuum to delivery higher value care.
The Department of Health and Human Services is promising consumers a simple enrollment process, but the federal marketplace website, along with a number of state exchanges, were glitchy or non-functioning during the morning of Oct. 1, as software kinks were exposed and servers were strained.
As health insurance exchange enrollment begins today, the stakes are high for states with large uninsured populations that are declining to expand Medicaid. That political decision could be the difference between the status quo and improvements in healthcare access and sustainability.
The federal government has shut down, but the health insurance exchanges opened for business as planned Tuesday, although with traffic tie-ups, despite Republican lawmakers' efforts to block a major component of the health reform law from taking effect.
Many of the 50 individuals who showed up for a community forum to find out about the Maryland Health Connection on a September evening in suburban Washington appeared to share a need for what the health insurance exchange could offer them.
As Congress has failed to pass legislation to continue funding the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services has furloughed more than half of its employees. Medicare and Medicaid funding will survive, at least in the short term.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is getting ready for the first year of its multi-state health plans, offering consumers another, perhaps little-known option in state and federal exchanges.
Patient advocacy groups have made available a cancer insurance checklist tool to help cancer patients decide which is the most appropriate health plan for them when shopping for coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.
Medicare officials will delay until 2014 enforcement of controversial new rules that define when hospital patients should receive observation care, rather than being admitted, a distinction that makes beneficiaries ineligible for follow-up nursing home coverage.