Insurance
SACRAMENTO — California state lawmakers this year are continuing their progressive tilt on health policy with dozens of proposals including a ban on a Froot Loops ingredient and free condoms for high schoolers. As states increasingly fracture along partisan lines, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on legislation that they will consider until they adjourn at the end of August. But the cost of these proposals will be a major factor given the enormity of the state’s deficit, currently estimated at between $38 billion and $73 billion. Health Coverage Lawmakers are again conside...
California Healthline
KALISPELL, Mont. — On a cold February morning at the Flathead Warming Center, Tashya Evans waited for help with her Medicaid application as others at the shelter got ready for the day in this northwestern Montana city. Evans said she lost Medicaid coverage in September because she hadn’t received paperwork after moving from Great Falls, Montana. She has had to forgo the blood pressure medication she can no longer pay for since losing coverage. She has also had to put off needed dental work. “The teeth broke off. My gums hurt. There’s some times where I’m not feeling good, I don’t want to eat,”...
California Healthline
Two months after a cyberattack on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary halted payments to some doctors, medical providers say they’re still grappling with the fallout, even though UnitedHealth told shareholders on Tuesday that business is largely back to normal. “We are still desperately struggling,” said Emily Benson, a therapist in Edina, Minnesota, who runs her own practice, Beginnings & Beyond. “This was way more devastating than covid ever was.” Change Healthcare, a business unit of the Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, controls a digital network so vast it processes nearly 1...
California Healthline
The Host Mary Agnes CareyKFF Health News @maryagnescarey Read Mary Agnes' stories. Lawmakers in Washington this week held the first congressional hearing on the Change Healthcare cyberattack, a breach that sent shock waves through the health care system as payments for care ground to a halt and left some providers in financial trouble. Republicans and Democrats alike zeroed in on how big health care conglomerations — like Change’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group — are leaving patients vulnerable. And nearly 1 in 4 adults who lost Medicaid coverage in the past year are now uninsured, accordi...
California Healthline
A wide-ranging lawsuit filed Friday outlines a moneymaking scheme by which large insurance sales agency call centers enrolled people into Affordable Care Act plans or switched their coverage, all without their permission. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, two such call centers paid tens of thousands of dollars a day to buy names of people who responded to misleading advertisements touting free government “subsidies” and other rewards. In turn, sales agents used the information to either enroll them in ACA plans or switch their existing...
California Healthline
Tax season is never fun. But some tax filers this year face an added complication: Their returns are being rejected because they failed to provide information about Affordable Care Act coverage they didn’t even know they had. While the concern about unscrupulous brokers enrolling unsuspecting people in ACA coverage has simmered for years, complaints have risen in recent months as consumers discover their health insurance coverage isn’t what they thought it was. Now such unauthorized enrollments are also causing tax headaches. Returns are getting rejected by the IRS and some people will have to...
California Healthline
Nearly a quarter of adults disenrolled from Medicaid in the past year say they are now uninsured, according to a survey released Friday that details how tens of millions of Americans struggled to retain coverage in the government insurance program for low-income people after pandemic-era protections began expiring last spring. The first national survey of adults whose Medicaid eligibility was reviewed during the unwinding found nearly half of people who lost their government coverage signed back up weeks or months later — suggesting they should never have been dropped in the first place. While...
California Healthline
Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary stories. This episode of “An Arm and a Leg” sounds like a real horror movie. It uses one of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: machines taking over. And the machines belong to the private health insurance company UnitedHealth Group. Host Dan Weissmann talks to Stat News reporter Bob Herman about his investigation into Medicare Advantage plans that use an algorithm to make decisions about patient care. The algorithm is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. Herman tells Weissmann that some of UnitedHealth’s own employees say the ...
California Healthline
Until last week, the system that is used to enroll people in federal Affordable Care Act insurance plans inadvertently allowed access by insurance brokers to consumers’ full Social Security numbers, information brokers don’t need. That raised concerns about the potential for misuse. The access to policyholders’ personal information was one of the problems cited in a KFF Health News article describing growing complaints about rogue agents enrolling people in ACA coverage, also known as Obamacare, or switching consumers’ plans without their permission in order to garner the commissions. The cons...
California Healthline
Insulin for Medicare beneficiaries “was costing 400 bucks a month on average. It now costs $35 a month.” President Joe Biden, in a March 22 speech The cost of insulin in the United States has risen considerably in recent years, with some estimates finding that Americans have paid around 10 times as much for the drug as people in other developed countries. But recent changes by the federal government and drug manufacturers have started to drive insulin prices down, something President Joe Biden often mentions at campaign events. Biden told the crowd at a March 19 campaign reception in Reno, Nev...
California Healthline
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