Tag: Health Insurance and Managed Care

Many Patients Don’t Survive End-Stage Poverty

He has an easy smile, blue eyes and a life-threatening bone infection in one arm. Grateful for treatment, he jokes with the medical intern each morning. A friend, a fellow doctor, is supervising the man’s care. We both work as internists at a public hospital in the medical safety net, a loose term for institutions […]

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England Limits Youth Gender Medications, Part of Big Shift in Europe

The National Health Service in England started restricting gender treatments for children this month, making it the fifth European country to limit the medications because of a lack of evidence of their benefits and concern about long-term harms. England’s change resulted from a four-year review released Tuesday evening by Dr. Hilary Cass, an independent pediatrician. […]

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Paying Off People’s Medical Debt Has Little Impact on Their Lives, Study Finds

Over the past decade, R.I.P. Medical Debt has grown from a tiny nonprofit group that received less than $3,000 in donations to a multimillion-dollar force in health care philanthropy. It has done so with a unique and simple strategy to tackling the enormous amounts that Americans owe hospitals: buying up old bills that would otherwise […]

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In Battle Over Health Care Costs, Private Equity Plays Both Sides

Insurance companies have long blamed private-equity-owned hospitals and physician groups for exorbitant billing that drives up health care costs. But a tool backed by private equity is helping insurers make billions of dollars and shift costs to patients. The tool, Data iSight, is the premier offering of a cost-containment firm called MultiPlan that has attracted […]

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For Red State Holdouts Like Kansas, Is Expanding Medicaid Within Reach?

As lawmakers in a nearby hearing room debated last month whether to support her legislation to expand Medicaid, Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas dared the state’s Republican House speaker to hold a vote. “If he thinks he can kill it, bring it,” Ms. Kelly, a soft-spoken moderate Democrat, said in an interview in her sprawling […]

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