Kaiser Health News
The group's first priority is advancing the Medicare doctor payment legislation pending in the Senate because it includes a provision requiring Medicare to release for broader use a substantial amount of data on claims at the provider level.
Issue raises concerns about how well the insurance marketplaces can handle the flux.
Cost of free care provided to patients who can't afford to pay slides to $101 million in 2014 compared with $171 million in 2013.
After Valley Hospital of Ridgewood, N.J., switched to pajamas and gowns that provide extra coverage, costs went up $70,000 per year.
Stiffer penalties for not having coverage and redoubled efforts to reach out and educate people about the health law and their obligations may be keys to increasing enrollment for people in these income groups.
If people choose not to have important preventive care and end up needing an expensive hospital stay years later as a result, everybody is worse off.
The report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association found that even after controlling for age, race, marital status and children in the home, males in nursing out-earned females by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals.
Average enrollment in company plans was essentially unchanged between 2014 and 2015 at 74 percent of all workers.
At issue is whether the company is doing anything different from its for-profit competitors to warrant its tax break.
Association finds 48 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, the majority in Southern states, and 283 others are in trouble.