- Home
- News
- Features
- Topics
- Labor
- Management
- Opinions/Blogs
- Tools & Resources
By JULIE APPLEBY, KHN— Some families with costly job-based health care coverage may be ineligible for federal subsidies to help them buy less expensive coverage through new online insurance markets, under final rules released Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2012, by the Internal Revenue Service. The two rules, published by the Treasury Department here and here, uphold earlier proposals outlining what […]
Continue reading …By JULIE APPLEBY KHN Staff Writer— It’s back to the future for insurers, which plan to sharply limit the choice of doctors and hospitals in some policies marketed to consumers under the health care law, starting next fall. Such plans, similar to the HMOs of old, fell into disfavor with consumers in the 1980s and 1990s, […]
Continue reading …By JAY HANCOCK, KHN Staff Writer— Consumer-driven medical spending may be the second-biggest story in health care, after the Affordable Care Act. As employers give workers more “skin in the game” through higher costs from purse and paycheck, the thinking goes, they’ll seek more efficient treatment and hold down overall spending. But consumers may not […]
Continue reading …By JAY HANCOCK, Kaiser Health News— Policymakers took heart from another year of relatively slow public health care spending growth in 2011, documented by government statisticians and disclosed in a report released Monday, January 7, 2012. But one aspect of moderating public health expenditures — and the only category showing outright decline — could cost more than it saves. Hit by recession […]
Continue reading …By MICHELLE ANDREWS, Kaiser Health News— For some people, the promise of employer-provided health insurance plan is reason enough to take a job or stay put in one. But unexpected events – a corporate bankruptcy or sale, for example – can undermine the security of on-the-job coverage and leave both employees and retirees with few affordable […]
Continue reading …By COLIN WOOD, Government Technology— During the past two years, many Republican governors held off taking steps to create health insurance exchanges in the hope that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 presidential election and repeal the Affordable Care Act. And now, some states, particularly those run by Republican governors, are faced with less time […]
Continue reading …By FRED SCHULTE, Center for Public Integrity— Four Republican House leaders want federal officials to suspend payments to hospitals and doctors who switch from paper to electronic health records, arguing the program may be wasting billions of tax dollars and doing little to improve the quality of medical care. In an 4 Oct. 2012 letter to Health […]
Continue reading …By JAY HANCOCK, KHN Staff Writer— The attraction of the 2010 health care law for insurance companies is obvious: Millions of new customers and billions in new spending. Those dollars will flow through state exchanges, online marketplaces where customers can shop for insurance. “This is the largest expansion since the Medicare program in 1965,” said […]
Continue reading …