House and Senate negotiators announced an agreement Monday on legislation that would allocate about $17 billion to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs' sprawling and beleaguered health care system. But the deal does not give the department everything that officials there have said is needed to fix its problems. The agreement set off a frantic rush on Capitol Hill to gather signatures from members of the conference committee working on the bill so that it could be put to a vote of the full House and Senate before lawmakers adjourn for an August recess on Friday.
Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which finances about half the health program for seniors and the disabled, won't run out of money until 2030, the program's trustees said Monday. That's four years later than projected last year and 13 years later than projected the year before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Unlike Medicare, however, the part of Social Security that pays for people getting disability benefits is in far more immediate danger. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is projected to run out of money in 2016, just two years from now, unless Congress intervenes, the trustees said.
Companies owned by Milwaukee-basedAssurant Health will pay consumers $30.8 million in rebates nationwide — more than any other health insurer — for violating an Obamacare rule that requires health insurers to spend the vast majority of premiums on medical care or activities to improve health care quality. The next-closest total rebate amount paid by a health insurer for 2013 was UnitedHealthcare's Golden Rule Insurance, which owes customers $27.5 million in rebates. A spokeswoman for Assurant Health said Monday that the company sells major medical insurance in more states than its competitors, which is one reason for the high dollar figure.
Massachusetts hospitals discharge a larger portion of their patients to other health care settings than the national average, a difference that has contributed to the state's higher post-acute care costs and has driven health care spending, a state analysis concludes. The findings come courtesy of a supplemental cost trend analysis report undertaken by the state's Health Policy Commission, which is tasked with keeping state health care costs and quality in check. The state first performed the analysis in 2013, and will conduct a hearing on the first cumulative comparative results come October 2014. In the interim, analysts looked to further delve into the 2013 findings, issuing a supplemental report in July.
When a doctor treating a North Carolina nursing home patient asked a nurse to text the resident's lab results, only the two authorized medical professionals saw the message -- but the residential facility ended up paying a high price for using this inherently insecure messaging medium. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gave the unnamed skilled nursing facility an "e-level deficiency," meaning there was "no actual harm but potential for more than minimal harm," according to a blog by law firm Poyner Spruill. As a result, CMS imposed a 10-point Directed Plan of Correction (DPOC) to be implemented within 15 days.
Anndorie Sachs had her life turned upside down when authorities showed up at her door in Salt Lake City and threatened to take her four children away - all because another woman had stolen her identity and given birth to a baby who tested positive for drugs. When CBS News first reported her story back in 2006, it was estimated that 200,000 Americans each year were the victims of what is called medical identity theft, but in the years since, the problem has gotten dramatically worse. According to a recent report by the Ponemon Institute, an independent research organization specializing in privacy and security issues, the number of victims grew to 1.85 million in 2013 - a 19 percent jump from the year before.