With U.S. road deaths spiking 20-year highs, everyone who travels in any fashion on the country’s roads must be as savvy as possible about staying safe, including by thinking twice about where to go to receive medical checks and treatment after any seemingly minor vehicle wrecks and by forgoing bike riding while high on drugs….
Continue ReadingInsurance
Big hospitals’ buck-raking schemes exploit poor and pile on medical debt
Big hospitals and hospital chains that enjoy the financial and reputational benefits of nonprofit or charitable status have taken major fire for maximizing profits while piling on patients’ crushing medical debt and exploiting the poorest and most vulnerable of the injured and sick. Medical economists, in recent times, have zeroed in on hospitals and their….
Continue ReadingTwo U.S. regulatory agencies rip nursing homes for sketchy debt collection
Two federal regulatory agencies have rebuked nursing homes and their debt collectors, warning them that they may be breaking the law with sketchy efforts to make loved ones and friends pay for the care of sick, injured, and debilitated residents in long-term facilities. Bottom line: A lot of the forms that you may sign for….
Continue ReadingWith Omicron vaccines approved, U.S. pushes for fall flu and Covid shots
As summer ends, millions of Americans should pop around the corner for a healthy double — that is, a pair of vaccinations, one targeted against the latest, widely circulating coronavirus Omicron variants and the other shot to fight the seasonal flu, federal health officials say. The newest booster for the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants….
Continue ReadingRollout will take time for Democrats’ big act on health, climate and taxes
President Biden and congressional Democrats have embarked on a major political experiment, testing the public’s willingness to delay gratification on seeing big benefits of a landmark measure with important elements to improve their health and wellbeing. Is it more persuasive to regular folks that one political party is trying to tackle huge problems, or will relentless….
Continue ReadingHospitals’ ‘charity’: 2.3% of patient revenue vs. $60 billion in tax breaks
Play this one out in your mind: a guy you know at church — he’ll be the first to let you know he makes $200,000 a year — tells you about how he gave to charity a junker car worth not more than $4,600 (2% of his income). Now what’s your reaction if you learn….
Continue ReadingObamacare coverage rates to increase 10% next year, early data hints, while top medical executives rake in massive pay
Consumers should brace themselves for increasing costs of yet another key component of most families’ budgets: the price of health insurance premiums. Even if Congress can’t get its act together to extend coronavirus pandemic-related subsidies for millions of Americans covered under Obamacare, insurers in individual marketplaces across 13 states and Washington, D.C., are looking to….
Continue ReadingAs medical costs, especially for cancer, slam patients, where’s Congress?
While Congress seems paralyzed or, at best, willing to shrink significantly its efforts to help Americans deal with the punishing costs of care in the U.S. medical system, could federal lawmakers be confronted at the same time with more compelling evidence about the need for aggressive, not timid, action? Do beleaguered constituents need to barrage….
Continue ReadingU.S. nears next health insurance cliff with affordability crisis growing
Even as Congress lumbers into creating the next crisis for millions of Americans and whether they can access and afford health insurance, the giant, built-in flaws in the current coverage system keep sending far too many patients and their loved ones into a financial morass with which politicians and policymakers refuse to reckon. Successive Democratic….
Continue ReadingHealth insurers start to join hospitals in giant disclosure of data on prices
If patients can benefit from price transparency by hospitals, shouldn’t employers and health insurers post online what they are paying for medical services? Yes, say federal regulators, who started requiring this effective July 1. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has ordered parties that act as health payers to make public a wealth….
Continue Reading