The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
Mary Chiu complained in 2011 that her elderly mother suffered terribly from poor care in a nursing home. Hers is among hundreds of cases that remain unresolved due to a backlog of investigations in Los Angeles County.
The cabinet member who shepherded the implementation of the health law told the president last month that she wanted to leave after open enrollment was finished, a White House official says.
Obama said in remarks at the White House that Kathleen Sebelius told him in March that she was going to step down as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services after the health law’s first open enrollment period came to an end. Sebelius also spoke at the event Friday.
Doctors who use the model say they can keep their costs down by avoiding the bureaucracy of the health insurance system.
KHN’s consumer columnist says new federal guidance says as long as you applied during open enrollment you will not face a penalty.
An audit that followed a KHN report revealed an alarming backlog of more than 3,000 open inspections at nursing homes. The supervisor in charge of the inspections has been replaced and moved to a ‘special assignment.’
Letters to the Editor is a periodic KHN feature.
A decades-old Medicaid restriction prevents treatment centers with more than 16 beds from billing the program for residential services for low-income adults.
Last week Congress delayed the upgrade of codes that govern the U.S. medical system. Some say this will waste billions of dollars and make cost-saving and life-saving research more difficult.
But physicians and database experts caution that the information can be easily misconstrued or misunderstood.
In states that agreed to expand Medicaid, about 3 million people who have those conditions are now eligible for coverage, however the 24 states that refused the Medicaid expansion have nearly millions with severe mental illness without insurance.
But experts say it’s too early to draw conclusions about the impact on premiums.
Trillium Community Health Plan is scrambling to take care of many more new customers than it expected in the first months of Affordable Care Act coverage.
As enrollment continues for some, insurers like Independence Blue Cross in Pennsylvania are busy trying to show new customers how to use their policies.
