Policy

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the health law's expansion of coverage to more than 13 million people this year has been the nation's safety-net hospitals, which treat a disproportionate share of poor and uninsured people and therefore face billions of dollars in unpaid bills.

Patients with an insomnia diagnosis have higher healthcare utilization and costs than a matched control group, both before and after the diagnosis.

Surgery patients covered by Medicaid arrive at the hospital in worse health, experience more complications, stay longer and cost more than patients with private insurance, a new study has found.

Antiretroviral drugs have replaced hospitalization and other services as the most costly component of HIV care, except in patients with especially advanced HIV.

Focus on services' worth to combat soaring healthcare spending.

Every person covered by Medicare would shell out an additional $3 a month if the government agreed to pay to screen certain current and former smokers for lung cancer, a new study estimates.

Three major insurers are partnering with a not-for-profit group to provide consumers with greater access to healthcare cost information, the group announced Wednesday morning.

One in four Medicare patients got medical care at least once in 2009 that provided no benefit at a total cost of at least $1.9 billion, newly published research suggests.

The CMS has canceled its first scheduled round of end-to-end testing for ICD-10 in the wake of a recent, one-year reset of the compliance deadline to Oct. 1, 2015, according to knowledgeable sources.

Many patients with chronic diseases now find themselves in contact with clinic-employed health coaches who nudge them to take their medications, eat right, be active and assume ownership of their health.

As the elderly population grows, state legislators across the United States are seeking to control the rising costs of caring for them. Specifically, legislators are focused on those elderly who have Alzheimer's disease.

Final rule reduces burdens to critical access hospitals, rural clinics; loosens physician supervision requirements.

Wayne J. Katon, MD, professor of psychiatry, director of the division of health services and epidemiology, and vice chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington Medical School, says that people with psychiatric illness in primary care settings cost the system twice as much as those without mental illness. Comorbidities such as depression can add to those costs.

States did little to improve healthcare access, quality, costs and outcomes in the past five years, according to a Commonwealth Fund report. Researchers examined 42 health indicators between 2007 and 2012, and found that in many states, access and affordability of healthcare actually declined among adults younger than 65. Healthcare spending rose $491 billion, reaching $2.8 trillion nationally.