Kaiser Health News

The nation in the next few years faces many important decisions about health care -- most of which have little to do with the controversial federal health law. Here are five issues candidates should be discussing, but largely are not.

During 2014, the first full year of the law's implementation, 91 percent of children who were eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program were enrolled, according to the study by researchers at the Urban Institute. In 2013, that figure was 88.7 percent and only 81.7 percent in 2008.

California's health insurance exchange estimates that its Obamacare premiums may rise 8 percent on average next year, which would end two consecutive years of more modest 4 percent increases.

Researchers found that the state mandates -- which apply to coverage available on the individual market and some group and employer plans -- led to about 12 percent more children getting some kind of treatment for autism. But when compared with the number believed to have the condition, it's not nearly enough, they say.

The company targets millennials, who have been at the forefront of change in other industries. Zoom is designed for an imaginary patient named Sarah, who is in her early thirties and wants to get her health care the same way she gets other services in her life -- quickly and efficiently.

The Food and Drug Administration has dropped a recall of some 2,800 scope-cleaning machines in use at hospitals and clinics nationwide despite a finding by a top agency scientist last year that the action was "necessary to protect public health."

Starting June 9, terminally ill Californians with six months or less to live can request a doctor's prescription for medications intended to end their lives peacefully.

Barred from restaurants, banned on airplanes and unwelcome in workplaces across America, smokers have become accustomed to hiding their habits. So it's no surprise many may now also be denying their habit when they buy health coverage from the federal health law's insurance exchanges.

1,900 women across the state were automatically transferred from the exchange to Medi-Cal since October, even though they were supposed to have the option to stay with Covered California.

According to a new study, shortages of many drugs that are essential in emergency care have increased in both number and duration in recent years even as shortages for drugs for non-acute or chronic care have eased somewhat.