Kaiser Health News
Among uninsured individuals who are not exempt from the Affordable Care Act penalty, the average household fine for not having insurance in 2015 will be $661, rising to $969 per household in 2016, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.
Cigna CEO David Cordani says the individual market created by the 2010 health law would be better off if insurers were given more flexibility in designing coverage, as well as a more compressed, focused open enrollment period.
Nearly 1 in 5 physicians now employ medical scribes, many provided by a vendor, who join doctors and patients in examination rooms.
Forty-five percent of the silver-level PPO plans coming to the market for the first time in 2016 provide no annual cap for policyholders' out-of-network costs, an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds.
The facility is slated to be renamed the Krispy Kreme Challenge Children's Specialty Clinic, but criticism from the medical community at the University of North Carolina and elsewhere is making the health care system rethink that choice.
While the average premium for the least expensive closed network silver plan--principally HMOs--rose from $274 to $299, a 9 percent increase, the average premium for the least expensive PPO or other silver-level open access plan grew from $291 to $339, an 17 percent jump.
Many co-op plans were priced low, and customers poured in. But these new customers had high health costs, so the co-ops had to start paying a lot of bills. The math didn't add up
Many primary care practitioners will be a little poorer next year because of the expiration of a health law program that has been paying them a 10 percent bonus for caring for Medicare patients.
In the last five years, 57 rural hospitals in the United States have closed, according to data from the Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina. Others have declared bankruptcy, like the Mendocino Coast District Hospital.
As beneficiaries explore options during the current Medicare enrollment period, there are only 227 such plans from which they can choose next year, 20 percent fewer than this year, and the lowest number since the drug benefit was added to Medicare in 2006, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.