Bay State lawmakers have announced a plan to control costs that includes, new ways to pay doctors and hospitals, a cap on health-care spending tethered to economic growth and a tax on the state’s most expensive hospitals if they can’t justify their prices.
High-deductible health care plans are no longer a novelty—they are becoming mainstream. How do they work? Are they a good deal? Here is a brief guide to this type of health insurance:
Opponents of the Obama administration’s contraceptive coverage mandate — including likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney — invoke “religious freedom.” But women’s groups and family planning organizations are convinced that the real objective is to limit access to birth control.
A report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation finds the state has spent just $91 million more a year since 2006 to cover the uninsured, than it was spending before the law passed. The sum amounts to 1.4 percent of the state budget.
Consumers would have received rebates of nearly $2 billion — in some cases as much as $300 member – if the health-law cap on insurance profits and overhead had been in place in 2010, estimates a new study. In Washington, total rebates to individual coverage would have run more than $6.5 million or about $62 per member.
Several European nations, where universal health care has been the norm for decades, have been waging their own intense debates as they also deal with aging populations and rising costs. Can the European experience cast some light on the American debate over health care?
Even without the health-care reform law, the federal government is changing how it pays doctors and hospitals, from a system that rewards volume to one that rewards quality. . . . “I think if the health care law were repealed tomorrow, it would not change the direction of what is happening in the marketplace.”
KHN compares progress of the health law’s implementation to original projections from 2010.
The White House has released a three-and-half minute video defending the Affordable Care Act.
Six in ten Americans, including Catholics, said they support a requirement by the Obama administration that health plans supply free contraceptives as a preventive benefit for women.
Does the GOP want to have a “moral” veto over your health insurance? Is U.S. healthcare already ‘socialized’? What’s it like to work as a home health aide?
Investigate IVF clinics? Will there be a debate over Medicare’s future? Is Obama’s ruling on contraception an attack on religion? School-based health centers: a nonpartisan solution?
LocalHealthGuide is a health news and information web service for Seattle and the Puget Sound Region. We are independent and unaffiliated with any hospital, medical association or insurer. If you have questions or if your group has an upcoming event that you would like us to cover, please let us know by going to our "Contact Us" page and dropping us a note. -- Michael McCarthy, Editor
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Lost in translation: Lack of trained interpreters can lead to medical errors
Interpreter services at hospitals and other medical settings are often inadequate, forcing family members, including children, to step in, or the task falls to medical staff members who may not speak the language well.
Some insurers deny ER coverage to people who have been drinking
Laws in more than half the states permit insurers to deny payment for medical services related to alcohol or drug use. Faced with the prospect of not getting paid for care, some ER personnel sidestep the problem by simply not testing patients’ blood or urine for alcohol.
Travel insurance can protect your wallet — and your health on vacation
Think your regular health insurance policy will cover you if you get into medical trouble overseas?
Don’t bet on it.
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