When it comes to family budget concerns, unexpected medical bills top Americans’ list of worries, with two-thirds (65%) of the public saying they are at least somewhat worried, including 35% who say they are “very” worried, the latest KFF Health Tracki…
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Even in the event of an outbreak, employers have to follow certain rules in their efforts to protect employees from this virus.
Until very recently, the separate company that runs the emergency department at Nashville General Hospital in Tennessee was continuing to haul patients who couldn’t pay medical bills into court.
Surprise bills are just the latest weapons in a decades-long war among health care industry players over who gets to keep the fortunes generated each year from patient illness: $3.6 trillion in 2018. The practice is an outrage, yet no one in the health care sector wants to unilaterally make the type of big concessions that would change things.
By writing in payment limits when signing hospital forms, patients might have leverage in negotiations over disputes that arise from surprise medical bills.
Insurance giant Cigna and San Francisco-based Dignity Health have failed to ink a 2020 contract, leaving nearly 17,000 patients in California and Nevada scrambling to find new health care providers. Meanwhile, Dignity faces financial and legal challenges while it strives to implement its merger with Catholic Health Initiatives, which created one of the nation’s largest Catholic hospital systems.
Medicare cut payments for 786 hospitals because of high infection and complication rates. They included a third of the hospitals proclaimed as the nation’s best in one prominent ranking.
As the Democratic primary campaign nears pivotal voting, important aspects of health care policy are being overlooked.
A young man averted medical disaster after a friend took him to the nearest hospital just before his appendix burst. But more than a year later, he’s still facing a $28,000 balance bill for his out-of-network surgery.
