Hospitals are penalized by Medicare for high readmission rates, but does this system really encourage better healthcare?
Health Insurance and Costs
Created by the Affordable Care Act to cut costs and improve quality, Medicare’s penalty programs disproportionately impact hospitals serving the sickest and poorest patients.
People with insurance are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic condition than uninsured people. That means that as the number of insured grows, the health system will have to cope with an influx of patients newly diagnosed with conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
There’s no question that prescription drug prices are skyrocketing in the United States, and consumers aren’t happy about it. What’s more complicated, though, is understanding the complexities of the issue and reporting on what those soaring prices mean for consumers.
Programs that offer public health coverage to kids are crucial to boosting the number of insured kids, but they're often not enough. Research suggests that parents' insurance status is a really strong predictor of whether their kids are covered. Policy wonks call it the "welcome mat effect."
Obamacare has strongly encouraged the creation of accountable care organizations, which focus on coordinating patient care so that, in theory, wasteful practices are eliminated and money is saved. But the early results have been mixed.
Health rankings published in recent years have made it clear that there’s a lot of work to do in Wyandotte County, Kansas, which has some of the worst health outcomes in the state, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Despite the numbers of Floridians stranded in a health policy no man’s land – earning too much for Medicaid but not enough for subsidies – the “coverage gap” was getting little attention from policymakers and media. A reporter at the Miami Herald set out to change that, by telling their stories.
The headlines have recently been dominated by talk of health insurers merging, but it's really part of a broader consolidation trend taking place in health care. Health policy expert Paul Ginsburg explains what's at stake when hospitals and physician groups combine, and how California is different.
When LA Times reporter Soumya Karlamangla started looking into health care policies affecting immigrants, she had no idea how fast the California policy landscape was about to change. Reflecting on her reporting journey over the past year, Karlamangla offers key tips for staying ahead of the story.