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At $531 billion, Medicaid is the second largest piece of healthcare spending and cannot be pushed off to be thought about another day, Cindy Mann, JD, CMS deputy administrator and director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, said at the America's Health Insurance Plans' National Conferences on Medicare and Medicaid and Dual Eligibles Summit.

No state-run exchange, no subsidy for health coverage. That's what a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled yesterday, marking the second such ruling against a key component of the Affordable Care Act and setting up a potential return trip to the US Supreme Court to decide the fate of a key piece of the law.

The first round of Open Payments data, known as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, were made public Tuesday and revealed 4.4 million payments valued at nearly $3.5 billion paid out to 546,000 individuals and almost 1346 teaching hospitals.

A ballot question to limit narrow networks in South Dakota evokes the outcry that occurred when managed care first sought to rein in costs in the 1990s. Critics of the measure say its passage will push up premiums 20 percent.

Results from 2 phase 3 trials showed better response rates, progression-free survival, and overall survival when a BRAF inhibitor was combined with a MEK inhibitor, compared with a BRAF inhibitor alone.

At the America's Health Insurance Plans' National Conference on Medicare and Medicaid and Dual Eligibles Summit in Washington, DC, Patrick Conway, deputy administrator for innovation and quality and chief medical officer for CMS, spoke on the future of delivery system reform.

Phase 3 trial data from the ROMANA trials, presented at ESMO found that anamorelin improves appetite and body mass in patients with advanced lung cancer who are suffering cancer anorexia and cachexia.

Plans designed specifically for disabled dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries are not necessarily enough to reduce use of costly services, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Xalkori, currently approved for treating NSCLC with ALK rearrangements, reduced the tumor size in nearly 75% of the patients and also extended the remission period.

The monoclonal antibody extended survival by nearly 16 months compared to those in the control cohort.

Results from the CheckMate-037 trial showed a significant increase in duration of response in patients with advanced melanoma administered nivolumab as second- or third-line therapy

Medicaid enrollment under the Affordable Care Act grew even in states that chose not to expand eligibility, making access to care a more pressing issue, according to a new report issued by HHS' Office of the Inspector General.

Even the most basic visits with emergency room physicians and other doctors called in to consult are increasingly leaving patients with hefty bills: More and more, doctors who work in emergency rooms are private contractors who are out of network or do not accept any insurance plans.

The accountable care organization, or ACO, can be a mechanism for employers to achieve healthcare savings, according to a just-published article in The American Journal of Accountable Care, the publication of The American Journal of Managed Care dedicated to healthcare reform.

Nearly $212 million in grant awards has been made available to all 50 states and the District of Columbia to support programs aimed at preventing chronic diseases, according to a recent announcement by HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.

A study published in the British Journal of Cancer discovered a correlation between hypercalcaemia and the risk of cancer, specifically in males.

The researchers identified discrepancies across the globe in patient access to life-saving cures for cancer.

Harvoni, the sofosbuvir/ledipasvir combination, received accelerated assessment and will now be sent to the European Commission for EU-wide marketing authorization.

Having delivered antibody mimics to cancer cells in vitro, the research group at MIT that conducted the research is now working on evaluating the technique in tumors grown in mice.

Life for accountable care organizations (ACOs) in Medicare's Pioneer program appears to be as tough as that on the prairie itself: only the strongest are surviving. Yesterday, 3 more ACOs exited the program, according to numerous news reports. This morning the web site for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Pioneer program listed only 19 ACOs from the original 32 that were part of the initiative when it launched in 2012.

UnitedHealthcare is establishing new accountable care organizations with Advocate Health Care and Illinois Health Partners that will provide coordinated care for more than 65,000 Illinois residents.

Healthcare providers have shown a lack of progress regarding ICD-10 readiness compared with a year ago, while vendors are mostly prepared, according to a new WEDI survey.

A new retrospective study published in JAMA identified that tuberculosis and certain fungal infections in the lungs could hamper the efficient detection of lung cancer by FDG-PET imaging.

Managed care has an answer to what happens when previously uninsured patients suddenly gain coverage: the cost of uncompensated care falls substantially, and so do the numbers of patients showing up at hospitals and emergency rooms without insurance.

Poor interoperability across health information technology systems is preventing accountable care organizations from using the technology to improve clinical quality.

The uninsured rate among Latinos dropped sharply under the Affordable Care Act, but there were stark differences between states that have expanded Medicaid and those that have not.

A prospective study published in The Journal of Thoracic Oncology found that the average cost to screen high-risk individuals for developing lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography plus the average cost of curative intent treatment, like surgery, is lower than the average cost to treat advanced stage lung cancer, which quite rarely results in a cure.

The study warns that rising temperatures can aggravate cardiac conditions, respiratory conditions, and infections, among others.

Controversy over the value of proton beam radiation continues to harass clinicians as the therapy emerges to be extremely useful in some, but not all, cancers. Additionally, payers sometimes refuse to cover treatment costs due to lack of evidence of efficacy.

The Affordable Care Act will save hospitals a projected $5.7 billion in uncompensated care this year, according to a report released by HHS. Roughly three-quarters of those savings are coming from Medicaid expansion states.