HealthyCT, the organization established by the Connecticut State Medical Society and its association of independent physician practices, has applied for federal approval to establish a licensed nonprofit health insurance company known as a Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan, or CO-OP. The federal health reform law allows and provides funding for CO-OPs–nonprofit, member-run health insurers–to offer […]

When it’s time to settle old accounts, Puerto Ricans say, “Borron y cuenta nueva.” The idiomatic expression literally means erase and start a new account – in other words, move ahead. This message carries good advice for the Malloy administration, which has gone out of its way to proclaim the proposed public health insurance option, […]

Connecticut is one of 30 states in which more than half the individual insurance market is dominated by a single insurer, but has more insurers with at least 5 percent of the market than nearly half the other states, according to a report released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report examined the competitiveness […]

Cancer often takes a heavy toll not only on people’s bodies but on their finances as well. And just as some types of cancer are more deadly than others, some types cause more financial pain, as recent research from Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center shows. When researchers examined bankruptcy rates in Washington state and compared them […]

Quinnipiac University has selected St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport to be the principal clinical partner of its new medical school, which is scheduled to begin classes in 2013. Under a five-year agreement between the two institutions, St. Vincent’s medical staff will take part in designing the medical school’s clinical curriculum and academic policies and […]

The government moved a step closer Friday toward defining what “essential benefits” would be offered by companies selling coverage to millions of Americans in new insurance exchanges. In a 297-page report, the Institute of Medicine, a federal advisory panel, laid out criteria and methods the Department of Health and Human Services should use in developing […]

Forty percent of the money Medicare paid for breast, colon, prostate and cervical cancer screenings during a recent six-year period involved patients considered too old to receive them by an independent government task force, report Rochelle Sharpe and Elizabeth Lucas of the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. That amounted to about $1.9 billion between […]

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 […]

The existence of “hot” streaks among athletes–periods of consistent high performance–has been a matter of contention among scientists, some of whom have found that the idea is likely a myth. But after analyzing thousands of free throws taken by National Basketball Association players, Yale School of Medicine researchers say there’s evidence that the “hot hand” […]

Smoking rates decreased, cancer deaths fell and fatal cases of coronary heart disease dropped in the U.S. during the first decade of the 21st century. But racial and ethnic disparities in health persisted, and across the board, obesity grew dramatically, federal and state officials said Thursday during a webinar to review Healthy People 2010, a […]

A Hartford-based workforce board is getting $4.98 million in federal funds to train unemployed registered nurses, medical coders and information technology professionals to work in fields with available jobs. The New England Knowledge Corridor Health Careers Project will develop a curriculum for people to work in medical coding–a field that is becoming more complex–and will […]