Rating the best hospitals has become commonplace, with U.S. News, research firms and various Internet sites routinely issuing detailed rankings. Now some health researchers have come up with a way to evaluate which hospitals are the worst. In a new paper for Health Affairs, Ashish Jha, John Orav and Arnold Epstein classified 3,229 hospitals by quality, using […]
Kaiser Health News
Posted inHealth
Parents fear health care law could derail autism coverage
Autism treatment advocates have won one legislative battle after another since 2007, most recently in California, which sent a bill to the governor this month mandating that insurers cover the disorder. Now more than half the states have such requirements, but that success could be in jeopardy as federal officials set new national standards for health […]
Posted inHealth, Money
What Obama’s debt-reduction plan would mean for key federal health programs
In his plan to trim the federal deficit, President Barack Obama Monday proposed $320 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, largely by changing how the federal government pays health providers, slashing payments to drug companies, and dramatically changing the way it splits the costs of Medicaid with the states, according to a fact sheet […]
Posted inNews
Sweating the details: Health reform supporters fret over HHS rules
Publicly, consumer and patient advocates continue to cheer wildly for last year’s health care law. Behind the scenes, however, some worry that they are losing a few key battles to the insurance and business communities. They point to a long-sought provision in the law that entitles patients to an external review if an insurer won’t pay […]
Posted inHealth
4th Circuit appeals court rejects Virginia, Liberty University challenges to health law
The Virginia case, brought by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, was considered one of the highest profile health law challenges to the health law. In its opinion, issued today, the appellate court ruled that the state does not have standing to challenge the law’s individual mandate because it lacks “a personal stake.” It also concluded that Liberty University’s challenge […]
Posted inHealth
Economists caution: ACOs may not end wasteful health spending
Two of the nations’ top health care economists have condensed many of the causes and challenges of America’s rising health care costs into one 29-page paper with a snappy title: “Aspirin, Angioplasty, and Proton Beam Therapy: The Economics of Smarter Health Care Spending.” Harvard’s Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra presented the paper last week at […]
Posted inHealth
HHS sponsors contest to develop Facebook apps for public health emergencies
The first thing East Coasters did when the ground began to shake this afternoon was not duck under their desks, but to turn to their smart phones. The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt from Durham to Toronto was immediately documented through social media like Facebook and Twitter. It was an interesting coincidence for Stacy […]
Posted inHealth
Appeals court rules health reform mandate is unconstitutional
The 2-to-1 decision marks a major blow to the Obama administration in its legal battle over the health law. But in the ruling, which addresses the challenge filed by 26 states, the court also disagreed with a lower court’s ruling and will allow other provisions of the law to remain “legally operative.” Click here to […]
Posted inHealth
New data on HIV infections suggests troubling trend
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that while the overall number of people who are infected with HIV each year is relatively steady – approximately 50,000 new infections each year – there was a 48 percent increase in the number of young HIV-infected African American men who have sex with […]
