Healthcare Finance Staff
Oversight of the health insurance exchanges and the shift to value-based payments are the leading management challenges facing the Department of Health and Human Services in the coming year and the most concerning to the HHS Office of Inspector General.
Public sector health insurance costs grew at twice the rate of the private sector this year, with taxpayers covering a large chunk and set to cover more if those high costs remain in the coming era of the Cadillac tax, according to a new survey.
Two Colorado lawmakers want to create a new state tax credit that would be available to individuals who end up paying federal penalties for going without health insurance.
Health plans are voluntarily extending the deadline to Jan. 10 for consumers to pay their first month's premium and still activate their coverage Jan. 1 in order to meet demand in escalating enrollment as federal and state exchange websites perform better.
The Department of Health and Human Services could improve Medicare quality through its clinical data registry program if it concentrated on performance measures, concluded a new federal report released this week.
Insurers responded softly if not sweetly to the Obama administration's latest requests and rule changes for individuals trying to buy coverage in online marketplaces by Jan. 1. Moody's Investor Service, which is watching Obamacare from the outside, isn't so tactful.
Less than a month before the new year, Minnesota joined three other states looking for a new health insurance exchange leader, after the first director, a former state economist and insurance company vice president, stepped down amid website dysfunction, a data breach and an ill-timed vacation.
Six years after the New York Department of Health started publishing hospital-acquired infection data as part of a public transparency agenda, the rates of most infections are trending downward, and benefiting health and financial outcomes.
Get ready, because data breaches are expected to rise in 2014, especially in the healthcare industry. New security threats and regulations that call for more transparency will be partly to blame.
HealthCare.gov has a new czar to replace fix-it guy Jeff Zients: former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene.