Adobe You’re reading the web version of Health Care Inc., STAT’s weekly newsletter following the flow of money in medicine. Sign up to get it in your inbox every Monday. The ‘#1 PRIORITY’ The emails from inside a physician practice owned by UnitedHealth Group sounded cheery, but were all business. advertisement One email trumpeted “ADDITIONAL BONUSES!!” for doctors who...
Tag: <span>insurance</span>
Difficulty of getting an effective but expensive drug through insurance
Perspective by Carolyn Y. Johnson Staff writer January 30, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST When a salmon-colored rash flared on my 3-year-old son’s tummy one afternoon in August, I shrugged it off. The next time I asked Evan to lift up his shirt to take a photo, it was gone. When he stopped sleeping through...
What to Know Before You Consider a Short-Term Health Insurance Plan
Lauren Chase Lauren Chase is on the Research team at GoodRx. You may be familiar with the most common avenues for accessing health insurance, like your employer, Medicaid, Medicare, or the individual health exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But if you recently lost coverage through your employer, aged out of your parent’s...
just how little short-term health plans paid out in medical benefits last year
Modern Healthcare’s Shelby Livingston found a report that uncovered just how little short-term health plans paid out in medical benefits last year, and hoo boy, the numbers are low, Axios’ Bob Herman writes. By the numbers: Fewer than 87,000 people had a short-term healthplan last year, paying only $110 million in cumulative premiums — indicating this market is still extremely...
Patients at risk of coverage denial
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed a national sample of Emergency Department visits between 2011-15 to determine what proportion of them could be denied coverage if commercial insurers across the U.S. adopted the policy of a large national insurer, Anthem, Inc., to potentially deny coverage, after the visit, based on ED discharge diagnoses. Researchers studied visits by...
Why a patient paid a $285 copay for a $40 drug
Two years ago Gretchen Liu, 78, had a transient ischemic attack — which experts sometimes call a “mini-stroke” — while on a trip to China. After she recovered and returned home to San Francisco, her doctor prescribed a generic medication called telmisartan to help manage her blood pressure. Liu and her husband Z. Ming Ma,...
Buyer beware: Inexpensive health plans often not what they seem
The Trump administration approved new insurance rules this week that will make it easier for people to buy skimpy health plans—and possibly wind up with insurance that falls short of their expectations. Credit: Petr Kratochvil/public domainUnder the federal health-care law, all plans sold to individuals and small businesses were required to cover a list of...