Local communities and the federal government prioritize dental care, but Florida's state agencies don't have much to offer, according to a special series in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Health Insurance and Costs
In Florida dental practices serving lots of Medicaid patients, parents are often barred from appointments.
A long-awaited decision by regulators appears to be imminent on the proposed merger between Cottage Health and Sansum Clinic, which has the largest physician practice in the area with 23 outpatient sites spanning Santa Maria to Santa Barbara.
“We expected to find a larger difference between plans on and off the exchange,” said researcher Simon Haeder. “In both cases, it was very unlikely to get an appointment.”
The secretive world of pharmaceutical pricing is mired in opacity. To investigate how pricey drugs are impacting California’s budget, reporter Pauline Bartolone found she had to be creative, flexible and persistent in her data sleuthing.
The goal of health care spending is to achieve good health results, and that requires measuring and rewarding success. Unfortunately, the measures likely to be used for the next stage of health reform won’t get us there.
Variation in C-section rates has been well explored, but journalistically, there is much more to do: What is the impact on women from these surgeries? What are the costs? What strategies are working to reduce rates?
Leading health policy experts zeroed in on problems with the “pay for performance” health care model in our webinar this week. Here's why they say the program needs to "hit the refresh button," and how reporters can cover it.
Medicare wants to lower payments to doctors who prescribe more expensive drugs and give higher reimbursements to those who use more affordable ones. But the industry pushback has been fierce.
In California, fines up to $125,000 per preventable mistake have not made a significant dent in the number of medical errors. Despite recent gains, the number is still higher than when the state’s program began nine years ago.