Health Care Delivery

As Medicaid enrollment grows under the program's expansion, there are not enough providers to serve the increased amounts of enrollees, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General that measured the availability of specific providers in Medicaid managed care networks.

The study published in Health Affairs recommends standardization of benefit plans across states for children, especially those related to developmental abilities.

Highly-paid doctors make more money ordering multiple procedures for individual patients than they earn seeing multiple patients, suggesting payment reform under the Affordable Care Act has yet to be realized.

The federal government may have made strides to improve the health insurance exchanges since last year's open enrollment, but a majority of Americans view shopping for health insurance as just as bad as or worse than doing their taxes.

Republicans in the US Congress plan to renew their attacks on President Barack Obama and his signature healthcare plan on Tuesday when they grill a consultant who said "the stupidity of the American voter" helped ensure the law's passage.

One criticism of the Affordable Care Act is that it imposes a costly, one-size-fits-all standard, drastically increasing premiums by requiring everyone to buy health insurance that covers the same mandated benefits. This is not so.

For 2015, marketplaces' ability to conduct an effective renewal process for current enrollees is constrained by their information technology capacity, the short time period for open enrollment, and limited resources for outreach and consumer assistance.

Rules issued today will help CMS keep fraudulent providers and suppliers away from Medicare, following a series of crackdowns in "hot spots" around the country.

Dr Kavita Patel, a practicing physician and a policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, writes in her opinion piece that Obamacare has achieved it's purported goals.

The part of HealthCare.gov intended for small businesses opened with reports of only modest technical flaws-but with doubts that it will soon benefit the millions of workers at little companies with inadequate health insurance or none at all.

A small business owner describes his experience with buying health benefit for his employees through the Affordable Care Act plans.

The rule applies to restaurants, retail food establishments, and vending machines with 20 or more locations.

Few employers are planning to eliminate their health benefits in 2015, but they are still looking to make noticeable changes, according to a report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Amid last week's news that CMS had miscalculated the number of enrollees under the Affordable Care Act was a quieter announcement that the agency had appointed a chief data office to improve transparency, among other tasks.

The disclosure that a calculation error caused the Obama administration to add an extra 400,000 people to ACA enrollment figures for months puts a dent in the 2015 open enrollment, in part because it fits a narrative of a lack of transparency for reporters who cover the administration.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have used electronic health record analysis to uncover hidden drug benefits, according to a study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

In March, the Obama administration released guidance extending the renewal of health insurance policies that do not meet the Affordable Care Act's coverage standards through October 1, 2016. At least 9 states that did not adopt the administration's original transitional policy are now allowing renewals of noncompliant policies after January 1, 2014.

Republicans finally filed a lawsuit against President Obama's healthcare reform law, the Affordable Care Act, after approving the suit in July. They are challenging the employer-based coverage aspect of the law, as well as Treasury payments to insurers.

A new study shows only a small share of patients with private insurance who were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2011-2012 enrolled in self-management training, raising questions about how well managed care could address both long-term health and cost control for this important group. These patients are a target for special attention under the ACA.

After last year's disastrous start, the first day of open enrollment in year 2 of the Affordable Care Act had fewer hiccups. HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathew Burwell was reporting success from this weekend.

Following the Supreme Court's decision to hear an appeal for the ACA subsidy lawsuit King v Burwell, a DC appeals court has halted work on a similar case it was reviewing.

Although open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act's insurance Marketplaces is almost here, a 10-question survey from Kaiser Family Foundation found that the health law's target audience still struggles with understanding insurance coverage.

More than a year after its disastrous debut, the federal website HealthCare.gov reopened last night, giving shoppers a few days to browse ahead of the November 15 start date for open enrollment, when consumers will have 60 days to make changes or, for some, select first-time coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Amidst discussions on liver care, transplants, and infections was a session on Value-Based Medicine in Hepatology, on the third day at The Liver Meeting 2014, an annual event by the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, held in Boston, Massachusetts, from November 7 to 11, 2014. Presenters saw a huge turnout for the session, a sign of increased interest in value-based care.

Based on data from 17 states and the District of Columbia, premium increases for 2015 are expected to be low, according to a report from The Urban Institute.

On the heels of a major Republican victory in the midterm elections, the Supreme Court has decided to review the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

Three days after the Republican Party gained control of the US Senate and rose to 250 seats in the House of Representatives, the airwaves are filled with bluster aimed at respective bases over what will become of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While experts from both sides of the aisle agree that a full repeal is unlikely, 1 item has shown up on almost every early list of elements unlikely to survive the next Congress: the medical device tax.

Large employer health plans will now be required to cover in-patient hospitalization services, according to a notice from the Treasury Department and HHS on Tuesday morning. The final regulation will be issued next year.