Medicare & Medicaid
As prescription drug prices continue to drive up healthcare spending, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is creating a new online dashboard to increase transparency and address affordability. Read the story for the full price breakdown.
CMS said 540 drugs had a 25-percent increase for $13.7 billion, or 11 percent of program costs.
The group ColoradoCareYES gathered enough signatures -- more than 100,000 -- to put a single-payer health system on the ballot next fall.
The data released Friday in the "Home Health Agency Utilization and Payment Public Use File" contains information on utilization, payments, and submitted charges organized by provider, state and home health resource group.
Thirty-two hospitals in 15 states, including the Cleveland Clinic and hospitals associated with the Community Health Systems, Tenet and Banner Health, are on the hook for $28 million to settle allegations they submitted false claims for inpatient care to perform minimally-invasive spinal surgery that could have been done in a less expensive outpatient setting, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Don Goldmann, chief medical and scientific officer for Institute of Healthcare Improvement, thinks the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs to change its methodology for ranking providers by their number of hospital-acquired infections as many respected hospitals are seeing payment reductions in the program.
After the last of the baby boomers become fully eligible for Medicare, the federal health program can expect significantly higher costs in 2030 both because of the high number of beneficiaries and because many are expected to be significantly less healthy than previous generations.
A coalition of civil rights advocates Tuesday called for a federal investigation of California's Medicaid program, alleging that it discriminates against millions of low-income Latinos by denying them equal access to health care.
Obesity is redrawing the common imagery of old age: The slight nursing home resident is giving way to the obese senior, hampered by diabetes, disability and other weight-related ailments. Facilities that have long cared for older adults are increasingly overwhelmed -- and unprepared -- to care for this new group of morbidly heavy patients.
The owner of an Illinois home healthcare company is facing conspiracy and fraud charges after being indicted in an alleged kickback scheme that defrauded Medicare for at least $450,000.