Tag: Medicare

States. They are really as perplexed as the rest of us over the ever-rising price of health care premiums. Now some states are moving to manage costs of state employee health plans. And it's triggering alarm in the hospital industry. The process: Use Medicare reimbursement rates to recalibrate the way they pay hospitals. If the […]

Three times per week, Tod Gervich injects himself with Copaxone, a prescription drug that can lessen the frequency of relapses in those who have some forms of multiple sclerosis. After a lot more than Two decades using the disease, Gervich, 66, is accustomed to managing his condition. What he can't get used to is when […]

Unraveling how much of a prescription medication price gets swallowed by “middlemen” is at the forefront of Tuesday's drug price hearing within the Senate. One thing bound to come up: rebates. Both major political parties show interest in remedying high drug prices, and drugmakers have bemoaned how rebates to middlemen have them from reaping every […]

Every year, nearly Two million people on Medicare – most of them seniors – visit a skilled nursing facility to recover following a hospitalization. But choosing the facility could be daunting, according to an emerging body of research. Typically, a nurse or a social worker hands out a list of facilities a couple of days […]

Amazon has opened a brand new health care frontier: Now Alexa may be used to transmit patient data. By using this new feature – which Amazon called a “skill” – a business named Livongo allows diabetes patients – so it calls “members” – to use the device to “query their last blood sugar levels reading, […]

The fight between policymakers set on lowering prescription drug prices and the drugmakers who keep raising them intensified Thursday, like a slew of Republican senators threatened to affiliate with manufacturers against legislation based on their very own committee chairman and president. After months of closed-door meetings and high-profile hearings, the Senate Finance Committee voted 19-9 […]

Most Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would rather expand the Affordable Care Act rather than replace it having a “Medicare for All” plan, based on a brand new tracking poll in the Kaiser Family Foundation. The poll, released Tuesday, also examines opinions on the generic government-run “public option” health plan that would be available to all […]

The 86-year-old woman in rural Utah doesn’t usually answer solicitations from strangers, she said, however the young couple who knocked on her front door seemed so nice. In a short time, she had paid her Medicare and Social Security numbers – and ensured that they swab her cheek to gather her DNA. She is among […]

Here we go again. It's been per month since Democratic presidential hopefuls last took to the debate stage, but Tuesday night in Detroit 10 candidates again faced off for that first of this two-night event. Health policy issues were the red hot issue. The matchup between Sens. Customer advocates of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of […]

Shopping around for the best deal on the medical X-ray or a new knee? The Trump administration includes a plan for that. On Monday, it proposed new rules that will provide consumers much more detail about the actual prices hospitals charge insurers. It comes down amid growing calls from consumer advocates, who argue transparency might […]