For the better part of a decade, a time bomb has been ticking at Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente — an accumulation of allegations that the giant health plan systematically defrauded Medicare by overstating the severity of its patients’ medical conditions. On July 30, the bomb detonated. That’s when the Department of Justice joined six lawsuits filed by Kaiser employees since 2013 asserting that they witnessed the alleged fraud.
Tensions are near a breaking point between the White House and Gov. Brian Kemp over Kemp’s plan to block Georgians’ access to the Affordable Care Act’s federal health insurance shopping website, healthcare.gov.
Individual rates for health insurance sold in Pennsylvania’s online marketplace will rise an average 2%, and small group coverage rates will increase an average of 4.8% in 2022, if approved by regulators in September.
According to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, cancer deaths, especially pancreatic cancer, were lower in states that participated in early Medicaid expansion as part of the Affordable Care Act, compared to states that did not. In the study lead by Duke Cancer Institute, researchers found that California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Washington and Washington, D.C., saw rates of cancer deaths decline by 7.7%.
Call center workers at Cigna, one of the largest health insurance corporations in the US, are reporting poor working conditions driven by high production demands, fear of being fired, lack of training, and long processing times for customers to receive reimbursement for Covid-19 testing costs.
More than 150,000 Oklahomans have qualified for Medicaid under an expansion of the program approved by voters, and state health officials say they suspect many more Oklahomans are eligible but haven't yet applied. The Oklahoma Health Care Authority reported Monday that 154,316 Oklahomans have qualified for the additional health benefits. Of those, nearly 91,000 live in urban areas and about 63,000 in rural Oklahoma. About half are between 19 and 34 years old.