What We're Reading: Health Insurance Coverage and Unecessary Procedures
October 12th 2015What we're reading on October 12, 2015: health insurance marketplaces may have challenges keeping customers they already have, but in California, consumers leaving the state insurance exchange are gaining coverage elsewhere, and the government is increasingly pursuing cases of potentially unnecessary procedures.
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Pioneer in Cancer Immunotherapy Receives Federal Award
October 8th 2015Steven Rosenberg, MD, chief of surgery at NCI's Center for Cancer Research, has been awarded the 2015 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal, or Sammie for his contributions to the field of immune-based cancer treatments.
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Obamacare Increased Collections, Decreased Visit Volume
October 6th 2015Coverage expansions resulting from the Affordable Care Act have not had a negative financial effect on medical practices. Instead, primary care physicians reported increased collections and decreased visit volume, according to athenahealth
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Hospitals Serving Vulnerable Populations Penalized for Readmission Rates
September 14th 2015Unaccounted for social and clinical characteristics of a hospital's patient population explain nearly half of the difference in readmission rates between the best and the worst performing hospitals when it comes to Medicare penalties for hospital readmission rates.
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New Medicare Advantage Entrants Increase Consumer Options
September 11th 2015Although a new report from The Commonwealth Fund raised concerns about the competition of Medicare Advantage (MA) programs available across the country, a new analysis from Avalere Health found that there has been a growing number of MA plan options for consumers.
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DPP-4 Inhibitors Subject of FDA Safety Warning
September 7th 2015FDA has warned that the drug class dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors may cause joint pain that can be severe and disabling. In a statement, the FDA said said it had issued a "warning and precaution" to all labels in this drug class.
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Provider-Owned Health Plans Do Not Produce Cheaper Insurance Coverage
August 29th 2015Although the fee-for-service model of reimbursement has been blamed as an reason for high healthcare costs in America, a report from HealthPocket found that eliminating this payment model in provider-owned health plans did not produce the cheapest health plans.
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