Breaking news on health insurance
Study Reveals 1 In 10 Canadians Cannot Afford Prescription Drugs published
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:00:00 PST
One in ten Canadians cannot afford to take their prescription drugs as directed, according to an analysis by researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. The study, published in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) is the first to examine the relationship between drug insurance and the use of prescription drugs in Canada...
In Hospital In-Patient Setting, Uninsured Receive Same Quantity, Value Of Imaging Services As Insured published
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST
Insurance status doesn't affect the quantity (or value) of imaging services received by patients in a hospital, in-patient setting, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Approximately 51 million Americans, or 16.7 percent of the population, were without health insurance for some or all of 2009...
Kaiser Permanente Study Finds Continuous Health Coverage Essential For Patients Managing Diabetes published
Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST
When patients with diabetes experience interruptions in health - insurance coverage, they are less likely to receive the screening tests and vaccines they need to protect their health. A new study finds that this is true even when patients receive free or reduced-cost medical care at federally funded safety net clinics...
Medicare And Private Insurance Spending Similar Throughout Texas published
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST
Variations in health care spending by Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) are similar throughout the state despite previous research, which found significant spending differences between the private and commercial sector in McAllen, Texas...
Health Reform - Individual States Given More Flexibility And Freedom, USA published
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST
US states are being given more freedom and flexibility in the implementation of health reform as stipulated in the Affordable Care Act, which aims to make sure all US citizens have access to affordable, quality health insurance, according to a bulletin released by the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services)...
Not All NJ Youngsters Are Equal When It Comes To Use Of Dental Services published
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST
When it comes to receiving dental care, New Jersey has its share of underserved children, according to a Rutgers study. In 2009, more than one-fifth of the state's children between 3 and 18 received no dental care within the previous year...
First-Of-Its-Kind Study Finds Public Health Insurance Coverage For Infants Is More Comprehensive And Costs Less Than Private Plans published
Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST
In the fierce national debate over a new federal law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, it's widely assumed that private health insurance can do a better job than the public insurance funded by the U.S. government. But a first-of-its-kind analysis of newly available government data found just the opposite when it comes to infants covered by insurance...
Children With Special Health Care Needs published
Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:00:00 PST
The first federally funded report to compare children with special health care needs to children without reveals 14 percent to 19 percent of children in the United States have a special health care need and their insurance is inadequate to cover the greater scope of care they require for optimal health...
New Government Efforts Increase Chinese Health Coverage published
Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST
Health care coverage increased dramatically in parts of China between 1997 and 2006, a period when government interventions were implemented to improve access to health care, with particularly striking upswings in rural areas, according to new research by Brown University sociologist Susan E. Short and Hongwei Xu of the University of Michigan...
High Level Of Waste In Health Spending, Says Medicare And Medicaid Boss published
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST
Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame...
Younger Americans' Health Disparity Gets Worse published
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:00:00 PST
There is a growing disparity between healthy and sick Americans born after 1980, caused by various factors, including a widening income gap, obesity which tends to hit certain income and ethnic groups more, access to health care services, and some other factors, researchers from Ohio State University wrote in American Sociological Review...
Little Or No Help For Two Million Californians Reporting Mental Health Needs published
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST
Nearly 2 million adults in California, about 8 percent of the population, need mental health treatment, but the majority receive no services or inadequate services, despite a state law mandating that health insurance providers include mental health treatment in their coverage options, a new report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows...
USA Health Expenditure Costs So Much For So Little published
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:00:00 PST
The United States spends 17.4% of its GDP (gross domestic product) on health care, compared to 9.6% among the rest of the OECD countries, a new OECD report announced today. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) consists of 34 countries, nearly all of which are the richest countries in the world (with the exception of Mexico and Turkey)...
Increase Of 50 Percent In Employer Health Insurance Premiums In Every State From 2003 To 2010 published
Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 PST
Premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance increased by 50 percent from 2003 to 2010, and the annual amount that employees pay toward their insurance increased by 63 percent as businesses required employees to contribute a greater share, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report that examines state trends in health insurance costs...
Health Insurance Non-Benefit Expenditures Unnecessarily Excessive published
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:00:00 PST
The U.S. remains on track to spend twice as much for health care as for food, yet millions are without insurance or uninsured. "Health insurance premiums also continue to rise on average another 9 percent in 2011," says Merton Bernstein, JD, leading health insurance expert and the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis...
"Don't Force Healthcare On Us" Say American People published
Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:00:00 PST
Obama's grand plans for universal healthcare slipped further into trouble today with a survey conducted by Gallup indicating that 47% percent of those questioned favor repealing the Affordable Care Act. Only 42% said the law should remain, with 11% not having a strong opinion about whether the government should mandate and effectively force people to have health insurance...
News From The Annals Of Family Medicine: November/December 2011 published
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:00:00 PST
Uninsured Patients Have Shorter Hospital Stays Patients without insurance have significantly shorter hospital stays than patients with insurance, raising worrisome concerns that hospitals may have increased incentive to release these patients earlier to reduce their own costs of uncompensated care...
Heart Attack Patients - Eliminating Co-Payments Improves Outcomes, Costs And Medication Adherence published
Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:00:00 PST
Eliminating co-payments is better for patients who have had a heart attack; their outcomes are better, they are more likely to adhere to their treatment regime, and costs are lower, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School revealed today in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine as well as the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions...
Children With Kidney Disease Faced With Racial Inequalities published
Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 PST
Highlights Pediatric racial minorities are much less likely than whites to get kidney transplants before they need dialysis, regardless of their families' income...
Sicker US Adults Have More Financial Problems Than In Other Countries published
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:00:00 PST
Chronically and seriously ill American adults have the highest rate of difficulties in paying their medical bills and doing without medical care because of cost, compared to their counterparts in the UK, Canada, Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany, a Commonwealth Fund International Survey reported today...
US Scores 64 Out Of 100: Commonwealth Fund Commission National Health Care Scorecard published
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 PST
The U.S. health care system scored 64 out of 100 on key measures of performance, according to the third national scorecard report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, released today. The scorecard finds that - despite pockets of improvement - the U.S as a whole failed to improve when compared to best performers in this country, and among other nations...
Administration Drops Americans' Insurance For Long-term Care, Key Component Of Health Overhaul Law published
Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:00:00 PST
Obama's administration has eliminated one of the Affordable Care Act's key new entitlement programs, saying that the Community Living Assistance Services (CLASS) Act which would have provided a basic lifetime benefit of a least $50 a day in the event of illness or disability, and was supposed to help reduce the federal budget by $86 billion over the coming decade, was simply "unworkable"...
Consumers May Have More Control Over Health Costs Than Previously Thought published
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:00:00 PST
The historic RAND Health Insurance Experiment found that patients had little or no control over their health care spending once they began to receive a physician's care, but a new study shows that this has changed for those enrolled in consumer-directed health plans...
Rising Health Insurance Costs A Problem For Individuals, Employers And Federal Government Alike published
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:00:00 PST
Kaiser Family Foundation's annual study, published today (Tuesday 27th Sept) found insurance costs for the 150 Million Americans that have health coverage through their employers jumped by nearly 10% this year, presenting a quite a problem. Kaiser and the Health Research & Educational Trust surveyed 2,088 randomly selected public and private employers large and small earlier this year...
One Million More Young Adults Have Health Insurance In The USA published
Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:00:00 PST
According to the CDC, one million more adults in America now have health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. During the first three months of this year, the number of young adults aged between 19 and 25 with health insurance rose by 3.5 percentage points, equivalent to about one million more people, data from NHIS (National Health Interview Survey) revealed...
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