Homeless people are being fraudulently enrolled in health plans on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace, induced with cash payments from insurance agents and brokers. Those who sign up for an ACA plan are disqualified from other forms of free and low-cost care and risk disruption in treatment.
Annie Malloy, of San Diego, is among the first to receive a new housing move-in benefit from Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. It’s an effort to help homeless and near-homeless people who might otherwise rack up huge medical bills.
The bipartisan deal to extend the U.S. government’s borrowing authority includes future cuts to federal health agencies, but they are smaller than many expected and do not touch Medicare and Medicaid. Meanwhile, Merck & Co. becomes the first drugmaker to sue Medicare officials over the federal health insurance program’s new authority to negotiate drug prices. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, and Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call join KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News senior correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble, who reported the latest KFF Health News-NPR “Bill of the Month” feature, about the perils of visiting the U.S. with European health insurance.
The billion-dollar amount cited by former Sen. Al Franken, while an estimate, is likely very close to what insurers will owe this year under a provision of the Affordable Care Act that compels rebates when insurers spend too little on actual medical care.
UnitedHealth Group is the largest health insurer in the United States. And it keeps growing. This has led some health care experts to call for antitrust regulation of this “behemoth” company.
UnitedHealth Group is the largest health insurer in the United States. And it keeps growing. This has led some health care experts to call for antitrust regulation of this “behemoth” company.
A bipartisan deal to raise the government’s borrowing limit dashed Republican hopes for new Medicaid work requirements and other health spending cuts. Democrats secured the compromise by making relatively modest concessions, including ordering the return of unspent covid funds and limiting other health spending.
When KFF Health News’ “What the Health?” podcast launched in 2017, Republicans in Washington were engaged in an (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The next six years would see a pandemic, increasingly unaffordable care, and a health care workforce experiencing unprecedented burnout. In the podcast’s 300th episode, host and chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner explores the past and possible future of the U.S. health care system with three prominent “big thinkers” in health policy: Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, Jeff Goldsmith of Health Futures, and Farzad Mostashari of Aledade.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
In what’s known as the Medicaid “unwinding,” states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
