Federal regulators have blocked two private sector enrollment websites from accessing consumer information through the federal Obamacare marketplace, citing “anomalous activity.” The unusual step comes as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is under the gun to curb unauthorized enrollment and switching of Affordable Care Act plans by rogue agents. The agency received more than 200,000 complaints in the first six months of the year about such actions. CMS said in a written statement that it had suspended the two sites — Benefitalign and Inshura — “while the anomalous activity is resear...
Kaiser Health News
Jamie Holmes says a surgery center tried to make her pay for two operations after she underwent only one. She refused to buckle, even after a collection agency sued her last winter. Holmes, who lives in northwestern Washington state, had surgery in 2019 to have her fallopian tubes tied, a permanent birth-control procedure that her insurance company agreed ahead of time to cover. During the operation, while Holmes was under anesthesia, the surgeon noticed early signs of endometriosis, a common condition in which fibrous scar tissue grows around the uterus, Holmes said. She said the surgeon late...
Kaiser Health News
SAN FRANCISCO — For years, Latinos represented the biggest share of new HIV cases in this city, but testing data suggests the tide may be turning. The number of Latinos newly testing positive for HIV dropped 46% from 2022 to 2023, according to a preliminary report released in July by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The decrease could mark the first time in five years that Latinos haven’t accounted for the largest number of new cases, leading to cautious optimism that the millions of dollars the city has spent to remedy the troubling disparity is working. But outreach workers and...
Kaiser Health News
“Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to cut, as you know, Medicare by $273 billion. She cast a vote to cut Medicare.” — Former President Donald Trump at a July 24 campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. During a July 24 campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, former President Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was responsible for passing legislation in the U.S. Senate to cut Medicare spending by nearly $300 billion. “As Vice President, Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to cut, as you know, Medicare by $273 billion,” Trump told rally atte...
Kaiser Health News
In the 18 months after Francine Milano was diagnosed with a recurrence of the ovarian cancer she thought she’d beaten 20 years ago, she traveled twice from her home in Pennsylvania to Vermont. She went not to ski, hike, or leaf-peep, but to arrange to die. “I really wanted to take control over how I left this world,” said the 61-year-old who lives in Lancaster. “I decided that this was an option for me.” Dying with medical assistance wasn’t an option when Milano learned in early 2023 that her disease was incurable. At that point, she would have had to travel to Switzerland — or live in the Dis...
Kaiser Health News
JACKSON, Ga. — Ed Whitehouse stood alongside a state highway in rural Butts County, Georgia, and surveyed acres of rolling fields and forests near Interstate 75. Instead of farmland and trees, he envisioned a hospital. Whitehouse, a consultant for a local health care company that wants to build a hospital there with at least 150 beds, said the group could break ground within a year. The idea, he said, is to provide medical services beyond those currently provided by Wellstar Sylvan Grove Medical Center, an aging, nonprofit “critical access” hospital that offers limited services, including emer...
Kaiser Health News
ATLANTA — At the shuttered Atlanta Medical Center, a “Stronger Together” mural sends a hopeful message near a summer spray of hydrangeas. The campus was mostly quiet on a recent weekend, since AMC closed almost two years ago. A lone security vehicle sat behind a chain-link fence, and pedestrians passed by without even a glance. In the town of Cuthbert, some 160 miles away, the Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center also remains shut after closing four years ago, another Southern hospital casualty in a region dotted with them. Even a smaller facility replacing the former Cuthbert hospital “w...
Kaiser Health News
STILLWATER, Minn. — Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate is making health care a front-burner issue in the final sprint to the November presidential election. Walz, a 60-year-old former high school teacher and football coach, has a record of supporting left-leaning health care initiatives during his two terms as governor and while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019. He also leads a state central to the health care industry: Minnesota is home both to the nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, and one of ...
Kaiser Health News
A federal lawsuit in Texas against Planned Parenthood has a web of ties to conservative activist Leonard Leo, whose decades-long effort to steer the U.S. court system to the right overturned Roe v. Wade, yielding the biggest rollback of reproductive health access in half a century. Brought by an anonymous whistleblower and later joined by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the suit alleges the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and three Planned Parenthood affiliates defrauded the Texas and Louisiana Medicaid programs by collecting $17 million for services provided while it fought state ...
Kaiser Health News
Trisha Byers left behind one crucial item when she moved to North Carolina last year to be closer to her family after suffering a brain injury: health insurance. In Massachusetts, Byers, 39, was enrolled in Medicaid, the government health program that covers low-income people. But she was ineligible in North Carolina, which had not yet expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. She said she racked up thousands of dollars in unpaid emergency room bills while uninsured for several months after her move. Then in December, North Carolina joined 39 other states and Washington, D.C., ...
Kaiser Health News
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