Policy and Legislation
The state that was supposed to pioneer single payer healthcare for the nation is dropping the idea. Gov. Peter Shumlin said the comprehensive tax scheme needed to raise more than $2 billion annually would be too disruptive.
In its toughest crackdown yet on medical errors, the federal government is cutting payments to 721 hospitals for having high rates of infections and other patient injuries.
Researchers and advocates worry the NIH may use that money for research not related to children's health.
More than 1 million people selected a health plan during the fourth week of the health law's open enrollment and nearly 2.5 million have done so since it began Nov. 15, federal officials said Tuesday.
More than $665 million will be distributed to states around the country to test new service and payment models, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.
Independent Bill Walker, who won election last month in a governor's race so tight the results weren't known a week after the voting was over, campaigned on the promise that he'd expand Medicaid as one of his first orders of business.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam this week proposed a "private option" Medicaid expansion policy for the state, the latest Republican state executive to back a managed care or market-based approach to bring in federal dollars.
Whether to cancel a company health insurance plan and let workers buy insurance on the online exchanges is an issue that arises for every small-group employer. But businesses shifting workers into the individual exchanges tend to be the very smallest.
Poverty continues to have an effect on repeated hospitalizations -- a situation that threatens to cost health systems in higher Medicare readmissions penalties if post-discharge plans are not established.
With less than a week until the deadline to buy individual health insurance that begins Jan. 1, experts say sign-ups are on course to hit or exceed the Obama administration's projection of about 9 million enrollees in 2015.