Consumer experience highlights potential risks of relying on agents and brokers, as the Trump administration loosens rules on health plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act
Continue readingResearchers try to cope without HHS public medical guideline database five months after its takedown
A nonprofit has launched a hopeful replacement as HHS agency pays for a study on how to disseminate guidelines in the future
Continue readingIn overhaul of HealthCare.gov webpage, information about ways to apply is gone
Links on the ACA enrollment page now direct to third-party sites, including a for-profit assistance system
Continue readingCMS removes PDF used to train assisters in providing healthcare outreach to Latino communities
The training resource, which had still-accurate information, was taken down from the CMS.gov Health Insurance Marketplace website without notice
Continue readingExplained: Scheduled downtime of Healthcare.gov during open enrollment
Maintenance downtimes warrant scrutiny, but experts say they’re probably reasonable and necessary.
Continue readingHHS in-house think tank sidelines ACA publications
Healthcare research from the Obama administration has been buried by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, or ASPE.
Continue reading14-Page Affordable Care Act website removed from Medicaid.gov
For the nearly 73.8 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and others newly eligible... View Article
Continue readingEasy Problems, Hard Problems and Healthcare.gov
This Reuters article about Healthcare.gov has been getting some attention today. Alas, it's not very good, focusing on client-side optimizations that are probably unrelated to the site's early woes. Healthcare.gov's problems are almost certainly occurring at a deeper level of the system, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to gauge their seriousness.
To explain, let's do one of those analogy things. Say that Kathleen is planning a birthday party for herself.
Guess who’s giving to lawmaker trying to repeal tax on medical devices?
The Minnesota congressman leading the charge to repeal a medical device excise tax that is meant to generate a big chunk of funding for the health care reform law has taken the most campaign money--more than $64,000--from medical device manufacturers this election cycle.
Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., has attracted 240 cosponsors, including 11 Democrats, for his bill to repeal the 2.3 percent excise tax, which the House is scheduled to consider this week. Paulsen hails from a state where the medical device industry is a substantial employer. Companies such as Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and Starkey Laboratories ...
Continue readingConsumer groups protest disappearance of doctor discipline data
[(Photo from the Kansas City Star website.)
[Note: this post has been corrected. Please read the note at the bottom, and comments, for further clarification.]
Reporters' and consumers' groups are protesting the Obama administration's decision to remove from the web a database of disciplinary actions and malpractice suits against physicians. The file, which has been online and publicly available since 2001, hides the names of individual doctors.
But that hasn't stopped reporters over the past decade from doing just that, using ...
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