Jay Hancock joined Kaiser Health News in 2012 from The Baltimore Sun, where he wrote a column on business and finance. Previously he covered the State Department and the economics beat for The Sun and health care for The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk and the Daily Press of Newport News. He has a bachelor's degree from Colgate University and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.
Jay Hancock, Kaiser Health News
The ACA created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to launch experiments in every state, changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid, building networks between caregivers and training them to intervene before chronic illness gets worse, but one of the biggest experiments is the center itself.
Analysts who fear health spending is accelerating got plenty of evidence in Wall Street's second-quarter results to support their thesis. But so did folks who hope spending is still under control.
Health costs will accelerate next year, but changes in how people buy care will help keep them from attaining the speed of several years ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers says in a new report.
Hospital revenue fell in 2014's first quarter compared with the final three months of 2013, the Census Bureau estimated last week. And for a full year -- from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014 -- revenue for healthcare and social assistance rose only 2.9 percent.
As out-of-pocket medical costs grow for many Americans, the insurance industry is offering a way to help and, at the same time, expand its business: by selling supplemental policies that may fill the gaps for consumers.
Maryland officials have reached what analysts say is an unprecedented deal to limit medical spending and abandon decades of expensively paying hospitals for each extra procedure they perform. If the plan works, Maryland hospitals will be financially rewarded for keeping people out of the hospital.
Across the nation, boards at nonprofit hospitals are often paying bosses much more for boosting volume rather than delivering value, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.
Maryland officials have proposed what analysts call the most ambitious initiative in the country to control soaring medical spending, a plan that would bring relief to employers and consumers footing the bill while bluntly challenging the state's powerful hospital industry.
President Barack Obama's victory cements the Affordable Care Act, expanding coverage to millions but leaving weighty questions about how to pay for it and other care to be delivered to an increasingly unhealthy, aging population.