Tag: medicare

April 26, 2021

Just as other industries are rolling back some consumer-friendly changes made early in the pandemic — think empty middle seats on airplanes — so, too, are health insurers. Many voluntarily waived all deductibles, copayments and other costs for insured patients […]

April 20, 2021

A Humana Inc. health plan for seniors in Florida improperly collected nearly $200 million in 2015 by overstating how sick some patients were, according to a new federal audit, which seeks to claw back the money. The Health and Human […]

April 1, 2021

Retired, vaccinated and ready to hit the road? Don’t forget to check whether your Medicare plan will travel with you. While coverage when you’re away from home depends partly on where you’re headed, it also hinges on the specifics of […]

March 24, 2021

When Democrats pushed through a two-year expansion of the Affordable Care Act in the covid-relief bill this month, many people celebrated the part that will make health insurance more affordable for more Americans. But health care researchers consider this move […]

March 23, 2021

A cost-saving change in Medicare launched in the final days of the Trump administration will cut payments to hospitals for some surgical procedures while potentially raising costs and confusion for patients. For years, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services […]

February 22, 2021

Opening another front in the nation’s response to the pandemic, medical centers and other health organizations have begun sending doctors and nurses to apartment buildings and private homes to vaccinate homebound seniors. Boston Medical Center, which runs the oldest in-home […]

January 28, 2021

Late last month, before President Joe Biden took office and proposed his pandemic relief plan, Congress passed a nearly 5,600-page legislative package that provided some pandemic relief along with its more general allocations to fund the government in 2021. While […]

January 21, 2021

Anita Baron first noticed something was wrong in August 2018, when she began to drool. Her dentist chalked it up to a problem with her jaw. Then her speech became slurred. She managed to keep her company, which offers financing […]

January 11, 2021

Keely Connolly thought she would be safe once the ambulance arrived at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center in Kansas. She was having difficulty breathing because she’d had to miss a kidney dialysis treatment a few days earlier for lack of child […]

November 2, 2020

Nearly half the nation’s hospitals, many of which are still wrestling with the financial fallout of the unexpected coronavirus, will get lower payments for all Medicare patients because of their history of readmitting patients, federal records show. The penalties are […]

September 22, 2020

David Usher is sitting on $1.7 million he’s scared to spend. The money lent from the federal government is meant to help hospitals and other health care providers weather the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet some hospital administrators have called it a […]

August 24, 2020

The Trump administration’s latest effort to use COVID-19 rapid tests — touted by one senior official as a “turning point” in arresting the coronavirus’s spread within nursing homes — is running into roadblocks likely to limit how widely they’ll be […]

August 19, 2020

You may already know that your payroll taxes help fund Medicare, which you’re generally eligible for at age 65. That doesn’t let you off the hook for further outlays once you sign up, however. Depending on the particulars of your […]

February 25, 2020

A leading group of medical experts on Tuesday declined to endorse cognitive screening for older adults, fueling a debate that has simmered for years. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said it could neither recommend nor oppose cognitive screening, citing […]

December 23, 2019

SAN MARCOS, Calif. — Two mornings a week, a van arrives at the Escondido, Calif., home of Mario Perez and takes him to a new senior center in this northern San Diego County town, where he eats a hot lunch, […]

July 31, 2019

Shopping around for the best deal on a medical X-ray or a new knee? The Trump administration has a plan for that. On Monday, it proposed new rules that would provide consumers far more detail about the actual prices hospitals […]

July 11, 2019

Baden-Mayer, a freckled forty-five-year-old, put her house on Airbnb three years ago and moved with her husband and two kids into her parents’ home in Alexandria, Virginia. Her mom, who has Alzheimer’s disease, was no longer able to take care […]

March 8, 2019

With much fanfare, federal officials required hospitals nationwide this year to post their “list” prices online. But it’s not yet clear how many are doing it, even as the government has taken the rare step of asking consumers to monitor […]

January 2, 2019

Since April, the government has been rolling out new Medicare cards to almost 60 million seniors enrolled in the program. The year-long effort seems to be going well, helped in part by a government marketing effort to get the word […]

September 26, 2018

On orders from Congress, Medicare is easing up on its annual readmission penalties on hundreds of hospitals serving the most low-income residents, records released last week show. Since 2012, Medicare has punished hospitals for having too many patients end up […]