Medicare
Q&A: States and Drug Prices
© AP Demonstrators march in front of Gilead Science’s Foster City, California, headquarters protesting the $28,500 price per patient for its AIDS treatment Stribild. The company is hearing similar complaints now over the $84,000 price tag for a course of treatment for its new hepatitis C treatment, Sovaldi. (AP) The new hepatitis C drug Sovaldi […]
Feds to Consider Paying for End-of-Life Planning
© AP Hospice patient Jocelyn Green, left, discusses medications with registered nurse Tanya Diedrich, of DeKalb County Hospice, at Green’s home in DeKalb, Illinois. The Obama administration is considering whether to reimburse doctors for conducting end-of-life conversations with patients. The federal government may reimburse doctors for talking to Medicare patients and their families about “advance […]
‘Private Option’ for Medicaid Expansion Would Cut Some Benefits
Protesters calling for Medicaid expansion are arrested for disrupting the Georgia state Senate in Atlanta. Many of the 24 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are considering using federal dollars to help people purchase private insurance. (AP) When Arkansas won federal approval to use Medicaid expansion dollars to help low-income […]
Drop in Uninsured, Growth in Medicaid
An Illinois Medicaid recipient rests in a suburban Chicago hospital. The number of people without health insurance is expected to drop dramatically in 2014, driven in part by an increase in the number of people covered under Medicaid and other government programs. (AP) On the eve of the federal health law’s launch date, a new […]
Utah is Fifth State to Adopt ‘Health Care Compact’
With Governor Gary Herbert’s signature on Tuesday (March 20), Utah has become the fifth state to enter into a compact designed to get the federal government out of the health care business, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. The so-called “Health Care Compact” would transfer control of Medicare and Medicaid from Washington to the states and […]
Stitching Medicare and Medicaid Together
When Michael Hall became Pennsylvania’s secretary of aging in 2008, the state ranked 49th in the nation in offering long-term care alternatives for elders who wanted to avoid nursing facilities. “Every survey ever done showed that nine out of 10 people in Pennsylvania said they didn’t want to go to a nursing home,” Hall recalls. […]
Rx import sites fizzle as Medicare expands
When Minnesota rolled out its Web site connecting customers to cheap prescription drugs from Canada in 2004, all the signs pointed to a state-federal showdown over whether Americans should be able to buy their medicine from abroad. Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) predicted the concept would serve 700,000 Minnesotans a year and save state government […]