Caitlyn Mai thought she did everything right. She called ahead to make sure her insurer would cover her cochlear implant surgery. She thought everything went according to plan but she still got a bill for the full cost of the surgery: more than $139,000. What Caitlyn did next is a reminder of why a beloved…
GREELEY, Colo. — In early August, farmworkers gathered under a pavilion at a park here for a picnic to celebrate Farmworker Appreciation Day. One sign that this year was different from the others was the menu: Beef fajitas, tortillas, pico de gallo, chips, beans — but no chicken. Farms in Colorado had culled millions of…
The conversation wasn’t sounding good for Kensington residents on June 20. The Philadelphia neighborhood is a critical center of the nation’s opioid crisis, and the city had decided to spend $7.5 million in opioid settlement money to improve the quality of life there. But on that day, a Pennsylvania oversight board was about to vote…
A decade ago, federal officials drafted a plan to discourage Medicare Advantage health insurers from overcharging the government by billions of dollars — only to abruptly back off amid an “uproar” from the industry, newly released court filings show. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the draft regulation in January 2014. The rule…
By GEORGE HALVORSON MedPac has just released a report on Medicare Advantage that’s incorrect on multiple key points that need to be corrected. Medicare Advantage currently enrolls the majority of Medicare members in the country, and it’s now the new basic plan for the Medicare program because of that majority enrollment level. That’s very good…
The RE-AIM framework developed by Glasgow et al. (1999) has five evaluation components. Reach: share of people from a given population who participate in a program and their characteristics. For instance, organizational reach with stakeholders could be indirect, intended or direct. Reach is the number of participants in the program divided by the size of…
La Administración de Drogas y Alimentos (FDA) ha aprobado una vacuna actualizada contra covid para todas las personas de 6 meses en adelante, lo que renueva un dilema que ahora es anual: ¿Recibir la vacuna ya, con el brote de covid aún por todo el país, o reservarla para la ola invernal? La nueva vacuna…
En medio de una amarga y divisiva contienda, el ex presidente Donald Trump y la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris solo parecen coincidir en una cosa: es tarea del gobierno reducir los altos precios de los medicamentos en el país. En 2022, Harris emitió el voto de desempate en el Senado para aprobar una ley que permite…
The FDA has approved an updated covid shot for everyone 6 months old and up, which renews a now-annual quandary for Americans: Get the shot now, with the latest covid outbreak sweeping the country, or hold it in reserve for the winter wave? The new vaccine should provide some protection to everyone. But many healthy…
A hard-won provision of the Affordable Care Act allows young adults to stay on their family’s health insurance until age 26. But after that, those without employer-sponsored insurance face an array of complicated choices, including whether to shop on the insurance plan exchange, apply for Medicaid, or roll the dice and go uninsured. Are you…