Medicare officials are pushing back against a federal watchdog’s call to crack down on home visits by Medicare Advantage health plans — a practice the watchdog says may waste billions of tax dollars every year. In late October, a Health and Human Services inspector general audit found that the insurers pocketed $7.5 billion in 2023 from diagnosing health conditions that…
With Vice President Harris promising to address medical debt as part of her economic plan, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy Larry Levitt explores why it is a symptom of the broader problem of affordable health care and reviews recent efforts to address it in this JAMA Health Forum post.
Fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid driving the nation’s high drug overdose rates, is also caught up in another increasingly serious problem: misinformation. False and misleading narratives on social media, in news reports, and even in popular television dramas suggesting people can overdose from touching fentanyl — rather than ingesting it — are now informing policy…
TUSTIN, Calif. — Cynthia Williams is furious with U.S. House Republicans willing to slash Medicaid, the government-run insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities. The 61-year-old Anaheim resident cares for her adult daughter, who is blind, and for her sister, a military veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions….
Collecting patient payments is an ongoing struggle. Bills are confusing, reminders go missed and patients can’t always afford to pay. Rising self-pay costs, new medical debt mitigation regulations, Medicaid changes and staff shortages all put added pressure on billing teams. The result is often poor patient financial experiences, wasted staff time and bad debt. As…
Las máximas autoridades en estadísticas del cáncer de Estados Unidos pronto deberán clasificar el sexo de los pacientes estrictamente como hombre, mujer o desconocido, un cambio que, según científicos y defensores de pacientes, afectará negativamente la salud de la población transgénero, una de las más marginadas del país. Médicos y activistas por los derechos de…
On March 15, 2025, the President signed a full-year “continuing resolution” (CR) that continues funding the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year. It maintains U.S. global health funding at the prior year (FY 2024) level ($10.8 billion).[i] The Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which was passed by the House on…More
Sofinnova Partners aims to invest in 50 to 60 new companies in the life sciences. The infusion of new capital brings the VC firm’s assets under management to more than €4 billion. The post VC Firm Sofinnova Partners Pulls In €1.2B to Deploy Across Life Sciences Investments appeared first on MedCity News.
As the federal government prepares for the next meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has intensified his attacks on aluminum vaccine components used in many shots to boost the body’s immune response. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before seeking public office, claims that aluminum…
That is the title of a paper from Costa-Font and Vilaplana-Prieto (2025). They find the the value is very large indeed. Relative to a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the value of IC [informal care] ranges between 4.2% in France and 0.85% in Germany. Such relative value declines as the country’s share of formal LTC…