In May 2021, Lags Medical Centers, one of California’s largest chains of pain clinics, abruptly closed its doors amid a cloaked state investigation. Nine months later, patients are still in the dark about what happened with their care and to their bodies.
The backroom deal with politically connected Kaiser Permanente, which infuriated other Medi-Cal health plans, allows the health care giant to continue selecting the enrollees it wants.
Our crowdsourced investigation of the high, confusing and arbitrary medical bills generated by our health system is set to begin its fifth year in 2022.
Legislative crackdowns on out-of-network bills haven’t kept specialists from hitting patients with unexpected charges running into thousands of dollars.
Although it’s possible to buy travel insurance that provides some health coverage, the devil is in the fine print. Obama-era laws that prevent refusal of payment for preexisting conditions don’t apply to travel insurance.
Congress is making slow progress toward completing its ambitious social spending bill, although its Thanksgiving deadline looks optimistic. Meanwhile, a new survey finds the average cost of an employer-provided family plan has risen to more than $22,000. That’s about the cost of a new Toyota Corolla. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Rebecca Love, a nurse academic and entrepreneur, about the impending crisis in nursing.
TV ads and mailings targeting seniors tout Medicare Advantage plans this time of year, but millions choosing traditional Medicare make a costly and difficult decision about Medigap coverage, which gets much less attention.
Fueled by consumer frustration with high premiums and deductibles, two new offerings promise a means for consumers to take control of their health care costs. But experts say they pose risks.
The nine commercial insurers in Medi-Cal must reapply by submitting bids for new contracts. The state hopes the process will improve care for low-income residents and tighten accountability, something critics say has been missing.
A Seattle patient discovers the hard way that you can still hit a lifetime limit for certain types of care. And health plans can vary a lot from one job to the next, even if the insurer is the same.
