California signed up an estimated 450,000 people under Medicaid expansion who may not have been eligible for coverage, according to a report by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ chief watchdog. In a Feb. 21 report, the HHS’ inspector general estimated that California spent $738.2 million on 366,078 expansion beneficiaries who were ineligible. It spent an […]
With the help of Edifecs, a Bellevue, Washington-based company, the state of Nebraska's Medicaid program implemented and went live on a new electronic data interchange platform.
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Healthy Indiana Plan that Vice President Mike Pence established in 2015 as the state’s governor has brought Medicaid coverage to more than 350,000 people.
The Affordable Care Act, which President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to repeal, threw a number of life-savers to rural hospitals. And its full repeal, without a comparable and viable replacement, could signal their death knell.
Yet researchers found no improvement in adults’ own assessments of their health, a conclusion echoed by similar studies, the authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Sarah Kliff spoke at a payment innovation summit in Portland today. She identified five states that we should watch to track experiments with new models of care and reimbursement. You can see her list and the reasons she chose each one in the slides above. Here is the list: Arkansas Maryland Massachusetts Oregon Utah Kliff […]
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
When Pennsylvania got the Obama administration’s sign-off on its Medicaid expansion plans last week, it became the ninth state with a Republican governor to agree to broaden coverage for low-income residents – a key component of Obama’s healthcare reform law. Getting to that point, though, wasn’t easy. The Obama administration has made itself open to […]
California is coming face to face with the reality of one of its biggest Obamacare successes: the explosion in Medi-Cal enrollment. The numbers — 2.2 million enrollees since January — surprised health care experts and created unforeseen challenges for state officials. Altogether, there are now about 11 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries, constituting nearly 30 percent of […]
WHEELING, W.Va. – Without insurance, Pam Milliken relied for years on the free health clinic here to help manage her arthritis, high blood pressure and diabetes. When she needed to have her gallbladder removed, the clinic, located in a former State Farm Insurance building, found her a specialist and hospital willing to do the surgery […]
Carmen Smith remembers the day about a year ago she gained Medicaid coverage. “It was like Christmas Day, it was like getting a gift from Santa Claus!” she says. “People don’t realize how important and how special it is to have insurance to be able to go see a doctor on a regular basis when […]
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Responding to inquiries from federal officials, the California health department has released a plan it says will dramatically slash its backlog of Medi-Cal applications within six weeks. For months, the state has labored under the largest such pile-up in the country, with 900,000 pending cases reported in May—the combined result of unexpectedly high application numbers […]
More than 80,000 additional Texans have enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since the rollout of the Affordable Care Act last fall despite Republican state leaders’ decision not to expand eligibility to poor adults, according to federal figures. The 80,435 new enrollees as of May — mostly Texans who already qualified for coverage but did not […]
Look at these two maps. See those green circles? Guess what they have in common? Poor health and corrupt public officials. The first map is from the 2013 America’s Health Rankings report. The second one is from a report on “The Impact of Public Officials’ Corruption on the Size and Allocation of U.S. State Spending.” […]
Delayed by state lawmakers, Michigan did not expand Medicaid until the day after the federal online insurance exchange closed March 31 – a move advocates feared would undermine signups. Turns out, enrollment is exceeding expectations, which has pleased officials who seek to make the state among the first in the nation to add a heavy […]
While an unprecedented 6 million people have gained Medicaid coverage since September, mostly as a result of the Affordable Care Act, more than 1.7 million more are still waiting for their applications to be processed—with some stuck in limbo for as long as eight months, according to officials in 15 large states. The scope of […]