Fred Schulte, John A. Hartford Senior Correspondent on the enterprise team, has worked at the Baltimore Sun, the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Center for Public Integrity. He is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories including those that exposed excessive heart surgery death rates in veterans’ hospitals, substandard care by health insurance plans treating low-income people and the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery in medical offices. Schulte has received the George Polk Award, two Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, three Gerald Loeb Awards for business writing and two Philip Meyer Awards. The University of Virginia graduate is the author of “Fleeced!”
While some doctor-owned labs have dodged collection efforts for years, several testing firms deeply in debt to Medicare appear to have few assets to repay overcharges dating back years, court records show.
Outside of public view, federal officials have been losing a high-stakes battle to curb widespread billing errors by Medicare Advantage plans, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The future looks bright for the integrated specialty pharmacy model – for health systems, providers, and most importantly, for patients.
When Minnesota retiree Doug Morphew needed surgery last year, he expected his Humana Medicare Advantage plan to step up and pay the lion’s share of the bill. Morphew said the health plan had told him over the phone he would owe just $450 for the two days he spent in a St. Paul hospital recovering […]
Many Medicare Advantage health plans routinely overbill the government for treating elderly patients — and have done it for years, a federal study shows. Department of Health and Human Services researchers found that many plans exaggerate how sick their patients are and how much they cost to treat. Medicare expects to pay the privately run […]