By ALISTER MARTIN and TARA MENON If a friend were to ask you which state, Massachusetts or Texas, has a more streamlined federal benefits enrollment program, what would your guess be? Having screened over 17,000 families and helped them obtain more than $1.8M in federal and state aid through our work in both Massachusetts and…
KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani discussed opioid settlements and the Supreme Court’s overturning of a bankruptcy deal involving Purdue Pharma on the “Front Porch Book Club” podcast on Sept. 17. Pattani, joined by journalist Ed Mahon, also discussed how much opioid settlement money Pennsylvania is receiving, who makes the spending decisions, and how…
From the FTC’s press release out today: Today, the Federal Trade Commission brought action against the three largest prescription drug benefit managers (PBMs)—Caremark Rx, Express Scripts (ESI), and OptumRx—and their affiliated group purchasing organizations (GPOs) for engaging in anticompetitive and unfair rebating practices that have artificially inflated the list price of insulin drugs, impaired patients’…
Gerri Norington, de 78 años, nunca quiso estar sola al envejecer. Pero su primer matrimonio acabó en divorcio y su segundo marido murió hace más de 30 años. Cuando una relación de cinco años llegó a su fin en 2006, se encontró sola, y así sigue desde entonces. “Echo de menos tener un compañero con…
WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — On a mid-August morning, Christopher Harrison stood in front of the shuttered Martin General Hospital recalling the day a year earlier when he snapped pictures as workers covered the facility’s sign. “Yes, sir. It was a sad day,” Harrison said of the financial collapse of the small rural hospital, where all four…
A seemingly innocuous proposal to offer scholarships for mental health workers in California’s new court-ordered treatment program has sparked debate over whether the state should prioritize that program or tackle a wider labor shortage in behavioral health services. Nine counties have begun rolling out the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Act, which Gov. Gavin Newsom…
David Dyke is the Chief Product Officer of Relatient, which is one of the biggest players in the up and coming area of direct patient scheduling. As anyone who has been stuck in a phone tree or tried to reach a live human just to get an appointment at a doctor’s office knows, scheduling in…
Why were drugs not included in Medicare in 1965? And the answer is, because drugs didn’t matter. They were not all that good, and they didn’t do a lot… We now see pharmaceutical care as the heart of treating someone; not so then. Steven Grossman, Executive Director – Alliance for a Stronger FDA It’s amazing…
The Host Emmarie Huetteman KFF Health News @emmarieDC Emmarie Huetteman, senior editor, oversees a team of Washington reporters, as well as “Bill of the Month” and KFF Health News’ “What the Health?” She previously spent more than a decade reporting on the federal government, most recently covering surprise medical bills, drug pricing reform, and other health policy…