A decade ago, California stopped licensing surgery centers and then gave approval power to private accreditors that are commonly paid by the same centers they inspect. That system of oversight has created a troubling legacy of laxity, a Kaiser Health News investigation finds.
The measure is designed to help people getting emergency care from hospitals or doctors that are not part of their insurance network.
Amid the buzz over apps and electronic medical records rescuing modern medicine, California’s Medicaid program still clings to 1970s-era technology. A reboot may cost half a billion dollars.
Federal officials are allowing the private insurance plans to use “step therapy” for drugs administered by doctors. In step therapy, patients must first use cheaper drugs to see if they work before receiving more expensive options.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health articles from the week so you don’t have to.
Doctors and hospitals love to talk about the patients they’ve saved with precision medicine, and reporters love to write about them. But the people who die still vastly outnumber the rare successes.
Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and 26 when he died. He couldn’t afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies. So he tried to stretch the doses.
Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and 26 when he died. He couldn’t afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies. So he tried to stretch the doses.
“I don’t feel any consumer should have to go through this,” says Drew Calver, who faced a life-changing surprise bill from an Austin hospital after a heart attack last year. After attention as a “Bill of the Month” patient, he paid the hospital $332. But he worries about other patients with surprise bills.
In this episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Joanne Kenen of Politico answer listeners’ questions about health policy and politics.
