News Clips

Missouri senators have approved a measure that would require approval from lawmakers or voters before the state makes efforts to set up health insurance exchanges.
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Every Sunday, eight to 10 people who can’t afford health insurance visit a free clinic in west St. Louis County.

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Recruiting doctors to small towns is a chronic problem. Most places try to lure a physician by rolling out the red carpet with a big salary, a home on a golf course or other cushy perks.
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The health law’s biggest changes don’t take effect until 2014, when states and insurers must be ready to begin signing up an estimated 32 million people in Medicaid and private insurance. But a successful rollout in two years hinges on critical decisions that states must make – and take quick action on – this year.
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Missouri’s health insurance costs rose just one-tenth of 1 percent due to a requirement that some Missouri health insurers pay to treat autism, the state Department of Insurance reported Tuesday.
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The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to repeal a provision of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul setting up a home-care program for the elderly and disabled that regulators said was unworkable.
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Tens of thousands of combat troops who undergo routine health checks before returning home need treatment for ailments ranging from bad backs to mental illness, helping to drive a backlog of troops waiting for medical retirements, new Pentagon data show.
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Under the health care overhaul, the federal government will start taxing itself and the states beginning in 2014. The law calls for a new tax on health insurers’ premium revenue �” intended to help pay for expansion of coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.
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Nurse practitioners say existing Missouri laws are preventing them from providing the best possible care to their patients, and lawmakers seem to agree.
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Premiums for the Medicare program that allows recipients to choose private insurance have dropped an average of 7% while enrollment has grown by 10%, according to Department of Health and Human Services statistics to be released today.
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Government spending for Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs will more than double over the next decade to $1.8 trillion, or 7.3 percent of the country’s total economic output, congressional researchers said on Tuesday.
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When Frances Barnes had a stroke in August 2008, she was taken by ambulance to Howard University Hospital. The 80-year-old grandmother was there for about two weeks when she began complaining about pain in her legs. Her daughter Althea Hart pulled back her mother’s blankets and noticed a strange odor.
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When the White House released a “progress report” recently examining how states were implementing the health reform law, Missouri was not among those showcased.
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What if when you’re sick and need to see the doctor, you could just log on to your home computer for a virtual visit instead of going to the office? That idea and others were kicked around among area health leaders last week at a meeting about what Google’s soon-to-be-installed high speed internet, Google Fiber, could mean for the region’s health care sector.
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Some doctors are beginning to discover a downside to electronic health records. Call it EHR overload. It refers to instances when physicians have so much medical data at their finger tips that they are overwhelmed and have trouble finding what they need to make quick decisions about treating patients.
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The 2010 health-care overhaul creates state-based health plans for those who have medical conditions that make them uninsurable in the private market. These "pre-existing condition insurance plans" (PCIPs) are intended to act as a bridge until 2014, when insurers will no longer be able to refuse to cover people with medical problems or charge them more than other consumers.
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A growing number of companies are reneging on health insurance and other retirement benefits, leaving retirees scrambling and sometimes uninsured.
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Health insurer WellPoint Inc. plans to improve primary care reimbursement and start paying for care management it doesn’t currently cover, changes that could give patients more quality time with their doctors.
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At first, it sounds like a put-down when Dr. Angela Whitesell describes Lockwood, Mo., the place where she grew up. "It’s a town in the middle of nowhere," she says, "and an hour away from everything." It soon becomes clear that her tone is reverential, another way of saying she was so "emotionally connected to the land" that she felt good about deciding to return home a few years ago to establish her medical practice.
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At issue is the health care law’s requirement that insurance plans provide simple, standard summaries of coverage and costs to help consumers pick benefits that are right for them — a sort of "CliffsNotes" version of the cryptic jargon.
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The use of about $27 million in federal funds to help create a health insurance exchange in Missouri has come to a complete halt.
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Insurers offering Medicare health plans were overpaid by the U.S. as much as $3.1 billion in 2010 because the government miscalculated how sick beneficiaries were, federal auditors said.
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The opening of St. Louis Regional Psychiatric Stabilization Center has been pushed to at least until next month after some delays in the licensing process for the mental health facility. The medical center at 5351 Delmar Boulevard will include a 24-hour emergency department and 16 short-term inpatient beds.
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America may be a technology-driven nation, but the health care system’s conversion from paper to computerized records needs lots of work to get the bugs out, according to experts who spent months studying the issue.
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In the past, after reaching a limit on the amount a plan would pay for their prescription drugs, seniors would have to pay the entire drug price out of pocket. The health-reform law has brought relief by giving 50 percent discounts on brand name drugs for seniors affected by the doughnut hole.
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The Obama administration touts it as a key solution to the nation’s runaway health care spending: a new national center set up by the 2010 health care law to test and implement groundbreaking ways to cut costs while improving patient care.
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A child hurts all over when his ailing teeth are untreated. Many children do not have a dentist’s attention because their families cannot afford it.
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The federal health care law gives states until 2014 to either set up their own insurance exchanges, which allow consumers to shop online for health insurance, or have one run by the federal government.
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House Republican leaders are drafting a bill to replace President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul if the Supreme Court strikes it down this summer.
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The percentage of Americans lacking health insurance coverage rose for the fourth straight year in 2011 to 17.1 percent, a new survey showed Tuesday. The climb has been steady since Gallup began tracking whether adults have health insurance in 2008. Four years ago, only 14.8 percent of adults lacked health insurance.
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Driving on I-35 and around downtown, you may have noticed several billboards popping up, advertising a “KC Exchange.” It’s a reference to the health exchanges outlined in the Affordable Care Act, aimed at helping individuals and small businesses comparison shop for health plans.
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Recent headlines offered a fresh example of how the health care system subjects people to too many medical tests — this time research showing millions of older women don’t need their bones checked for osteoporosis nearly so often.
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Uncertainty over the fate of health reform, centered on the Supreme Court case and the presidential election, has led some states to adopt a wait-and-see approach that may make it impossible for them to meet Health and Human Service’s timeline for building their own insurance exchanges.
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A U.S. agency formed to compare the effectiveness of drugs and medical devices plans a broader agenda that will study subjects such as whether care provided by nurse-practitioners is as good as that of doctors.
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In the last years of Martin Privot’s life, his family had to start selling his assets to pay for his nursing home costs. “He needed 24-hour care and couldn’t be left alone,” recalls his daughter Toni Footer. “My biggest fear was we would run [through his money] and wouldn’t be able to provide the care that he needed.”
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It’s often said that the main method of paying health care providers — with a fee for each service — results in increased and wasteful spending. Such a system, its critics say, rewards providers just for doing more procedures, rather than for providing efficient and high-quality care.
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Health plans are trying to lock in business before government-sponsored health insurance exchanges go online in 2014. Several large insurers are launching private insurance exchanges to protect themselves against competition from the public exchanges.
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Here’s a reality check for President Barack Obama’s health overhaul: Three out of four uninsured Americans live in states that have yet to figure out how to deliver on its promise of affordable medical care.
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Three out of four uninsured Americans live in states that have yet to figure out how to deliver on its promise of affordable medical care.
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A list of states and their uninsured population, grouped according to the progress they have made in establishing health insurance exchanges, a linchpin for expanding coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law.
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Under the new health care law, health insurers that raise premiums by more than 10 percent in any given year are scrutinized to determine whether the increase is "unreasonable."
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Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and might make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.
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When a man recently visited an emergency room here with a toothache, consulting physician Alan Sorkey quickly diagnosed the dental infection was serious and even potentially fatal.
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Among the issues on Congress’ must-do list is the "doc fix" – finding billions of dollars needed to avert drastic rate cuts for physicians who treat Medicare’s 48 million beneficiaries.
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Less than a year from now, states will have to prove to Washington that they are capable of running a health insurance exchange on their own, or the federal government will create one for them. The way it looks now, only a handful of states are likely to make that deadline.
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The Obama administration said on Wednesday that 28 states have taken steps to establish insurance exchanges under the 2010 healthcare law, despite the legal and political uncertainties threatening the overhaul.
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A stipulation in the 2010 health care law that bans U.S. states from dropping Medicaid patients has forced them to be more efficient in managing the program to save money, according to a report today.
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About 20 percent of American adults suffer some sort of mental illness each year, and about 5 percent experience a serious disorder that disrupts work, family or social life, according to a government report released Thursday. According to the study, slightly less than half the people with any mental illness — and only 60 percent of those with serious, disabling ones — get treatment each year.
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Two cases before the Supreme Court have the potential to effectively do what Republican lawmakers have tried and failed: transform Medicaid into a block grant program for states with few enforceable federal rules about how they provide health coverage for the poor.
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Gov. Jay Nixon released his budget estimates Tuesday night ahead of his State of the State speech. The largest share of the budget cuts -- $191 million -- come from changes in the state’s Medicaid program.
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If you saw that your doctor had written "SOB" in the notes he took during your latest office visit, you might be offended and wonder what you’d done to give him such a negative impression. But "SOB," in physicians’ shorthand, simply means "shortness of breath."
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Evidence is mounting that second opinions — particularly on radiology images and pathology slides from biopsies — can lead to significant changes in a patient’s diagnosis or in recommendations for treating a disease.
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As one of the many outgrowths of the sweeping federal health care law, health insurers and employers must now pay the cost of screening children for obesity and providing them with appropriate counseling.
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Through its WorkWell training series, the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce is helping local businesses create wellness programs that are good for employees’ individual health, workplace attitude and even the company pocketbook.
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More than two years ago, studies found that injection of medical cement into compression fractures of the spine produced no better pain relief than "sham" injections. Yet doctors continue to perform the $5,000-plus procedure and most insurers, including Medicare, still cover it.
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Patients expecting relatively long waits for emergency room care are said to be surprised by what happens when they use a new program at some hospitals in the SSM system. Instead of showing up at the ER unannounced and taking a number, the patients have the option of contacting the hospital to hold their place in line and generally getting faster service when they walk in the door.
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Eighty percent of Missouri, including all of Southeast Missouri, has already been designated a Health Provider Shortage Area by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Callaway County residents can learn the pros and cons about the new federal health care law at the “Understanding the Affordable Care Act” seminar on Feb. 6 in Fulton.
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Prescription drug shortages — a national issue for the past few years — are getting worse, raising new safety concerns for patients, delaying treatment plans and even surgeries, and causing higher out-of-pocket costs and rising prices in health care, pharmacy groups say.
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Proposed new state rules could make it possible for some serious hospital mishaps or errors to become public record. The proposed Medicaid rules would require Missouri hospitals to report such problems involving Medicaid patients to the state agency overseeing the insurance program for low-income patients.
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Few things make me feel as clueless as a bill from my doctor’s office. I don’t recognize the abbreviations or understand the jargon. I can’t tell when I’m being charged too much. And there’s no screen on the wall, at least not at my doctor’s office, tallying the cost of each extra test I agree to or question I ask.
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Just 1% of Americans accounted for 22% of health care costs in 2009, according to a federal report released Wednesday. That’s about $90,000 per person, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. U.S. residents spent $1.26 trillion that year on health care.
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The American College of Physicians hit a nerve when it released an updated ethics manual calling for doctors to provide "parsimonious care" – in other words, "to practice effective and efficient health care and to use health care resources responsibly."
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In health care history, 2012 will be remembered for the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on the Obama administration’s health overhaul. But in the states, 2012 will likely be remembered less as an historic turning point than as a gradual continuation of their longstanding struggles to get Medicaid costs under control.
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The two-month-old clinic is open from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sundays and offers free, non-emergency primary health care for uninsured, low-income people aged 18 to 64.
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Twenty-six states on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to overturn the health care reform law’s mandatory state expansion of the Medicaid program, a sleeper issue in the health care reform lawsuit that could determine how much leverage the federal government has with the states on any issue.
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A State Senate committee heard testimony today on legislation designed to block Governor Jay Nixon (D) from creating a health insurance exchange.
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National health spending rose a slight 3.9 percent in 2010, as Americans delayed hospital care, doctor’s visits and prescription drug purchases for the second year in a row, the Obama administration reported Monday.
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U.S. health care spending grew at the second-lowest rate on record in 2010 as recession-spooked consumers avoided going to the doctor, taking expensive prescription drugs and undergoing costly elective procedures.
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PCORI is not quite a household name, but if Dr. Anne Beal has her way, it will be soon. The acronym stands for Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute—a group of doctors, researchers, statisticians and patient advocates who will commission evidence-based research for the health care system. The goal, according to Beal, is to provide easy-to-understand information to patients so they can make the most informed health care decisions.
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More than 150,000 seniors in Eastern Massachusetts who are enrolled in traditional Medicare plans have received a letter in the mail - or will soon - informing them that their doctors are part of a newfangled health care system. Each accountable care organization, or ACO, is aimed at making sure patients get “the right care, in the right place, at the right time,’’ the letter says.
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National health care spending grew slowly for the second consecutive year in 2010, bringing it in line with growth in the U.S. economy, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Monday.
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What the health care act will mean in 2012 is yet to be seen, but officials hope the focus on prevention and patient awareness will find success.
Health care providers, consumers and business owners with an eye on the 2012 outlook for health care reform will need a patient, wait-and-see attitude.
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Defending President Barack Obama’s signature health care overhaul, the administration is urging the Supreme Court to uphold the contentious heart of the law, the requirement that individuals buy insurance or pay a penalty.
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The government filed its opening brief in the battle over the 2010 health-care overhaul, which has become the most controversial accomplishment of President Obama’s domestic agenda. Its resolution will define the court’s term.
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The Supreme Court is being bombarded with legal arguments for the overturning of President Barack Obama’s health reform law, as the law’s opponents filed briefs Friday arguing that if the individual mandate is unconstitutional, the rest of the law must be struck down, too.
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Consumers filled 88 million discounted prescriptions at Walgreens last year under the chain’s agreement with Express Scripts, the pharmacy benefit company based in St. Louis. The arrangement gave Walgreens access to millions of additional customers while allowing Express Scripts to negotiate lower prices for company, government and union health plans.
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Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.
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A small-business group fighting President Barack Obama’s health care law asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to add two plaintiffs to its lawsuit after possible problems arose with an initial plaintiff.
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Peter Cady, who works 12-hour shifts on his feet at Intel’s plant here, occasionally suffers severe lower back spasms. But he nearly gave up seeking medical help because in the weeks it took to get a doctor’s appointment and a referral to physical therapy, the pain usually subsided. These days, however, Cady is much happier with his care.
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Despite the sluggish economy, the nation’s major health insurers have prospered in large part by expanding their role in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, according to a study released Thursday.
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Not taking your medicines as prescribed can hurt your wallet as well as your health and far outweigh any savings on your pharmacy bill. Not filling prescriptions and even skipping doses can result in serious complications and lead to ER visits and hospital stays, even premature death.
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More than half of American public schools don’t have a full-time nurse, and the situation is getting worse as school systems further cut budgets. This year, 51 were laid off in Philadelphia’s public schools, 20 in a Houston suburb, 15 in San Diego and dozens more in other school systems nationwide.
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A linchpin of the 2010 federal health law is the requirement that nearly everyone sign up for a health insurance plan �“ whether it’s Medicaid, other federally subsidized insurance, or private coverage. To make that easier to do, the law calls on states to set up health insurance exchanges where small businesses and individuals can choose the policies that best fit their needs at a price they can afford.
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With more than 1.5 million baby boomers a year signing up for Medicare, the program’s future is one of the most important economic issues for anyone now 50 or older. Health care costs are the most unpredictable part of retirement, and Medicare remains an exceptional deal for retirees, who can reap benefits worth far more than the payroll taxes they paid in during their careers.
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One of the biggest political question marks going into 2012 is the fate of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Audie Cornish speaks with Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times about what’s ahead for Americans in terms of health care in the new year, including a constitutional challenge to the law’s mandatory health care provision.
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The last time Mark Stella went to the dentist he didn’t need an insurance card. Instead, he pulled out a Groupon. Stella, a small business owner, canceled his health insurance plan more than three years ago when his premium rose to more than $400 a month.
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A measure proposed in the Missouri Senate would amend the state constitution to bar governments from requiring people to have health insurance and from penalizing them for paying their own medical bills.
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Missouri lawmakers are preparing a second salvo over the federal health care law. The most recent push comes after the state became the first to use a referendum to challenge the federal law’s requirement that most people eventually get health insurance.
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After overcoming some delays, operators hope to open a short-term facility next year to accommodate people needing help for a mental-health crisis. Initially, the St. Louis Regional Psychiatric Stabilization Center was expected to open before the end of this year.
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Bill Dunphy thought his colonoscopy would be free. His insurance company told him it would be covered 100 percent, with no copayment from him and no charge against his deductible. The nation’s 1-year-old health law requires most insurance plans to cover all costs for preventive care including colon cancer screening.
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Experts offer the following tips for avoiding surprise medical bills for preventive care.
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Starting in 2012, the government will charge a new fee to your health insurance plan for research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best.
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Twenty-three states will share $296.5 million in U.S. payments for encouraging low-income families to enroll their children in public health programs. Bonuses announced today reward states that streamline eligibility for Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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Just as Medicaid prepares for a vast expansion under the federal health care overhaul, the 47-year-old entitlement program for the poor is under increasing pressure as deficit-burdened states chip away at benefits and cut payments to doctors.
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As of last spring, Missouri was considered on track – ahead, even - in developing a state health insurance exchange. It’s intended to be a centralized online marketplace where individuals and small businesses can compare and purchase health plans. Under the federal health law, exchanges are supposed to be up and running in each state by 2014. But politics appear to have put the brakes on efforts to set up one up in Missouri.
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Starting in 2012, the government will charge a new fee to your health insurance plan for research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best. But what will Americans do with the answers?
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The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the mouth provides an even better view of the body as a whole. Some of the earliest signs of diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, immune disorders, hormone imbalances and drug issues show up in the gums, teeth and tongue—sometimes long before a patient knows anything is wrong.
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Hospitals are usually eager to embrace the latest medical technology, but the road to deploying tablet computers has been bumpy.
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Congress has ended its latest fiscal standoff by agreeing to extend a payroll tax cut, but David O. Barbe still feels rattled by a sense of ongoing uncertainty. The Mountain Grove physician says the last-minute deal leaves him and other doctors in a kind of limbo.
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It’s become an unpleasant ritual for doctors who see patients with Medicare. Every so often, they are threatened with a devastating cut to their Medicare reimbursements mandated by a rate-setting formula that leaders of both parties agree is flawed but would cost nearly $300 billion to permanently repeal.
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High-deductible and consumer-driven health plans got slightly larger footprints on the employee health benefits scene in 2011, but traditional health insurance plans continued to be the dominant form of coverage.
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The historically steady growth of the Walgreen Company’s business of filling prescriptions is likely to drop off sharply next year, as the pharmacy giant faces the imminent loss of millions of customers who use the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.
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Throughout Medicare’s 46-year-old history, monitoring the cost of the government health plan for the elderly has been a bit like the old joke: No one asked if spending would jump. They only asked how high.
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More than 160 million U.S. workers will pay lower payroll taxes for at least two additional months as part of a deal reached Thursday between House Republicans and Senate leaders.
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The Obama administration’s surprise announcement Friday that it planned to give states broad leeway to pick the benefits offered under the federal health care law offers yet another example of a gradualist approach to carrying out its signal domestic policy achievement.
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For patients, the transition from hospital to home is a critical time. Discharged with follow-up instructions and often a fistful of medications, many need medical guidance. But too often a smooth handoff to a primary-care physician doesn’t happen, and small recovery glitches become larger ones. The result: In short order the patient is often back in the hospital.
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The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will use an unprecedented week’s worth of argument time in late March to decide the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul before the 2012 presidential elections
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The Department of Social Services will continue meeting with those connected Medicaid in Missouri to discuss how the spend down provision of that program is applied.
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Nearly 650,000 doctors caring for millions of seniors will get a steep cut in Medicare payments Jan. 18 unless a gridlocked Congress issues a reprieve, program officials said Tuesday.
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State Sen. Scott Rupp, R-St. Charles (right), says Missouri lawmakers should take no action on any insurance exchanges until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the legality of the health reform law under which exchanges are being created.
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James Breedin cannot keep track of how often he has been admitted to Howard University Hospital for heart problems. "It’s been so many," said Breedin, a 75-year-old disabled former truck driver from Northeast Washington.
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Thirty-two groups were named Monday to test a new health care model, called for in the health care law and designed to improve care for seniors while reducing costs.
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With many states unwilling or unable to get insurance exchanges operational by the health law deadline of Jan. 1, 2014, pressure is growing on the federal government to do the job for them.
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The loss of 16,830 state health department jobs since 2008 may undermine investments intended to improve health, a U.S. non-profit says.
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With many states unwilling or unable to get insurance exchanges operational by the health care law’s deadline of Jan. 1, 2014, pressure is growing on the federal government to do the job for them.
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In a major surprise on the politically charged new health care law, the Obama administration said Friday that it would not define a single uniform set of “essential health benefits” that must be provided by insurers for tens of millions of Americans.
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States will be given wide latitude to decide what “essential benefits” insurers must offer in their health policies come 2014, the Obama administration said Friday in a move that pushes off final federal rules on the topic until an unspecified date.
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The Obama administration on Friday rolled out a benefits framework for millions of people who will get private insurance through the health care overhaul, but states will decide the specifics.
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It was adopted by Congress in 1997 almost as an afterthought — a new formula to keep Medicare spending on doctors from growing faster than the economy as a whole.
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Among the must-do issues on Congress’ end of year list is the "doc fix" – billions of dollars needed to avert drastic rate cuts for physicians who treat Medicare’s 48 million beneficiaries.
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There are no doctors in Pilot Grove, Mo., but the town’s 825 residents have perhaps the best alternative source of health care, thanks to an enterprising nurse practitioner.
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A Democratic senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and a Republican member of the House, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, unveiled a bipartisan plan on Wednesday to revamp Medicare and make a fixed federal contribution to the cost of coverage for each beneficiary.
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Try to solve this one: What do you put in a health insurance plan to make it just broad enough to cover most people’s needs but not so broad that no one can afford it?
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The number of young adults lacking medical coverage has shrunk by 2.5 million since the new health care overhaul law took effect, according to a new analysis the Obama administration is to release today.
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Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on Thursday plan to introduce a new Medicare reform plan that would allow seniors to choose between traditional Medicare and new private insurance programs.
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U.S. health care reforms have enabled 2.5 million young adults to join or remain in their parents’ health insurance plans, the U.S. government said on Wednesday, up from 1 million reported earlier this year.
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Repeat customers in hospitals are seen as a big problem – not to the hospitals themselves, which can profit from some patients’ frequent visits, but to the entities that pay for the care: Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers.
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Some of the business community’s toughest critics welcome efforts to ease requirements as the law is implemented. But advocates for patients and consumers voice frustration.
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The number of young adults lacking medical coverage has shrunk by 2.5 million since the new health care overhaul law took effect, according to a new analysis the Obama administration is to release Wednesday.
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More than one in five Americans who are privately insured are now part of high-deductible plans, a figure that’s at an all-time high and growing rapidly according to a new survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
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Doc fix is Washington shorthand for the Sustainable Growth Formula, a mouthful of a payment plan wrapped into a 1997 budget law. It was supposed to be a so-smart way of linking physicians costs, Medicare enrollment and the GDP.
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The situation that was left behind when an Indianapolis-based company’s contract to handle Medicaid needs assessments for the state was terminated was called by some a “crisis.” The Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services says that crisis is now over.
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Spending by U.S. states on Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor, soared last year and will likely continue growing despite measures to contain costs, according to a report released on Tuesday.
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Understanding health insurance and your options will get easier, thanks to a little known measure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Starting in 2012, health insurance companies and employers must provide information in a way that is clear and easy to understand.
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The approval is the latest signal the administration will give broad leeway to states to expand managed care in Medicaid if they meet performance measures showing they are improving care. Currently, about half the 60 million people in Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, are covered by private managed care plans that have promised to coordinate care and hold down spending.
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Five years ago Alexandria Extrusion Co. invited nurses, dieticians, personal trainers - and even spiritual leaders - onto its factory floor to help workers battle obesity, diabetes, smoking and high blood pressure.
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When Jenny Morrill, who has been battling ovarian cancer since 2007, went to the hospital for her scheduled chemotherapy treatment in June, the nurse greeted her with both good news and bad.
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St. Louis County compares favorably to Missouri in smoking rates and percentage of residents lacking health insurance. But other pressing issues include higher incidences of cancer, high incidences of chlamydia and gonorrhea and high emergency department admissions for diabetes and others with chronic diseases.
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Raising taxes on millionaires may be a non-starter for Republicans, but they seem to have no problem hiking Medicare premiums for retirees making a lot less.
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House Republicans hope to dip into a big but complicated pot of money in the health reform law to pay for payroll tax relief and Medicare payments to physicians.
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It’s a return trip nobody wants to take: You are discharged from the hospital, only to find yourself readmitted a few days later. More and more people are finding themselves in this revolving door — at a cost to both hospitals and patients.
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A new federal health insurance rule in President Barack Obama’s health care law was supposed to crack down on wasteful administrative expenses, but insurance agents and brokers say they’re about to become unintended casualties.
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NPR and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll of people who had been unemployed or with an insufficient level of work for more than a year. The results document the financial, emotional and physical effects of long-term unemployment and underemployment.
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If Congress can’t finish its homework before it goes on recess, it might be able to get an extension — but only if it’s willing to trim its winter break. At least, that’s the case with the “doc fix” — a temporary change to Medicare’s troubled provider payment formula that Congress must pass to prevent a deep cut to physicians.
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Obesity, diabetes and smoking are the primary risks that dropped Missouri one spot to 40th in the nation in the 2011 America’s Health Rankings report.
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The federal government’s decision to open access to Medicare data so groups can compare practice patterns of doctors and hospitals is the latest indication that certain major health reforms will move forward no matter how the Supreme Court rules on the Affordable Care Act.
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As a small-business owner, you may find your head spinning when trying to figure out what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may bring. The law’s key provisions are set to take effect roughly two years from now, on January 1, 2014. Here’s a look at how you may be affected.
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Concerned he may have broken a bone, the project manager who lives in Washington, D.C., didn’t go to the nearest emergency room or wait until Monday to call his physician for an appointment. Like an increasing number of Americans looking for fast and affordable health care, he went to an urgent care facility.
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Federal officials are extending the Dec. 7 deadline for three days for some people enrolling in a Medicare prescription drug or private health plan because of the crush of last-minute sign-ups.
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Several state lawmakers are unhappy with the way the Department of Insurance is handling the beginning stages of a state insurance exchange.
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Missouri and Kansas both took a step (or more) back in the United Health Foundation’s annual state health rankings.
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Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said he’s proposing a bill that that would give the U.S. Department of Justice authority to crack down on "unscrupulous drug distributors" who sell hospitals life-saving prescription medicines in short supply at huge markups.
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House Republicans intend to propose a gradual increase in Medicare premiums for wealthy seniors to help cover the cost of renewing Social Security payroll tax cuts and benefits for the long-term unemployed, officials said Wednesday.
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Throughout Robert Joseph’s career, the Alvin, Texas, electrician always understood his health insurance policies. "I’ve never had a problem," Joseph says, "until I tried to sign up for Medicare." The chief reason: Joseph didn’t sign up when he turned 65.
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More than 2.65 million Medicare recipients have saved more than $1.5 billion on their prescriptions this year, a $569-per-person average, while premiums have remained stable, the government plans to announce today.
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Picking a specialist for a delicate medical procedure like a heart bypass could get a lot easier in the not-too-distant future.
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At most companies, employee health insurance premiums vary only by family size and type of plan. At a small percentage of firms, however, another variable is taken into account: salary. At these companies, workers’ premiums are pegged to how much they earn. Workers who earn less, pay less.
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Now that the sweeping defense authorization bill for 2012 has passed the Senate and House, the fight over Tricare, the health insurance plan for the military, has reached a truce — for the moment.
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At most companies, employee health insurance premiums vary only by family size and type of plan. At a small percentage of firms, however, another variable is taken into account: salary. At these companies, workers’ premiums are pegged to how much they earn. Workers who earn less, pay less.
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Throughout Robert Joseph’s career, the Alvin, Tex., electrician always understood his health insurance policies. “I’ve never had a problem,” Joseph says, “until I tried to sign up for Medicare.” The chief reason: Joseph didn’t sign up when he turned 65.
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The woman chosen to represent the legal challenge to the Obama administration’s health care overhaul filed for bankruptcy in September after her business failed, a move that could pose problems for the high-profile lawsuit.
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Medicare’s open enrollment period ends on Wednesday, which is earlier than in previous years. If you don’t choose by then, you might be stuck for another year with the Medicare drug or Medicare Advantage plan you have now.
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Bean counters at the Pentagon are working long hours to figure out how to cut close to a trillion dollars from the Department of Defense budget over the next 10 years. Those were the Pentagon’s marching orders after the congressional supercommittee failed to come up with a plan to slash the country’s deficit.
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The impact of mandatory Medicare pay cuts triggered by the congressional debt panel’s recent failure to reach a deal is the subject of sharp disagreement.
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This year’s deadline for Medicare open enrollment is Wednesday; much earlier than in the past when it continued through December 31. The Insurance Department is reminding Missouri’s senior citizens not to let it pass without acting.
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Despite predictions that last year’s health law would doom Medicare’s private insurance plans, it’s not happening – at least not yet. Enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans continues to grow at a brisk pace, rising to 8.4 million beneficiaries by April 2011.
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More than 2,400 health care providers and advocates sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius today objecting to recommendations made by a panel of the Institute of Medicine regarding what benefits must be covered in state health insurance marketplaces developed under the Affordable Care Act.
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The federal law requires the Department of Health and Human Services to connect, review and distribute information on insurers seeking rate increases exceeding 10 percent. Consumers wanting to know which insurers are raising rates above 10 percent can find the information from a "rate review tool" on HHS’s website.
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Most U.S. health insurers last year would have satisfied the much disputed spending rules under President Barack Obama’s health care reform, according to a new report by a congressional watchdog agency.
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A loophole in the federal health care overhaul could allow employers to game the system by getting their sicker employees to opt into buying coverage on the health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.
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When U.S. hospitals cut expenses as the economy slid into recession, they looked first to basic supplies like light bulbs and bandages. Next on the list: artificial hips and knees.
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Even with more children living in poverty because of the rough economy, the number of children without health insurance in the U.S. has dropped by 1 million in the past three years, according to a report released Tuesday by Georgetown University.

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Medicare announced Tuesday it will pay for screenings and preventive services to help recipients curb obesity and the medical ailments associated with it, primarily heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
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The House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care will hold a hearing tomorrow morning to examine the causes behind the shortages of more than 200 older generic drugs that are usually sold at slim profit margins.
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Medical tests can reveal critical information about a person’s health, but only if the results are communicated to clinicians and patients. Sometimes, the ball gets dropped somewhere between the lab or the radiology department and the clinician who ordered the test and the patient.
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In official Washington-speak, the process is known as sequestration. But the mandatory reductions of $1.2 trillion in spending — also known as the trigger — are very real and are on track to slash many government programs.
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For state governments, the coming Supreme Court ruling on health reform isn’t an abstract argument about the U.S. Constitution. It’s a highly practical question about whether, when and how to proceed with one of the health law’s most important and complicated pieces: setting up health insurance exchanges.
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Unless Congress acts before Jan. 1, doctors face a 27 percent cut in their fees for treating Medicare patients. That could undermine health care for millions of elderly and disabled beneficiaries.
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Clinics at schools are becoming a key part of the nation’s medical safety net.
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The still-relatively new federal health care law makes dozens of preventive tests free for patients. Doctors or hospitals are not supposed to charge patients for annual check-ups, most screening tests and a dozen other services such as tobacco cessation. This provision began taking effect more than a year ago, but there is still confusion about how it works.
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Jo Anne Morrow has a no-nonsense way of getting some of the state’s neediest kids to smile. She sues or threatens to sue the state to win Medicaid coverage for braces for their teeth.
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Medicare’s prescription coverage gap is getting noticeably smaller and easier to manage this year for millions of older and disabled people with high drug costs.
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When Dean Di Tosto bought long-term care insurance in 1998, he believed he was locking in a low rate. Now the 83-year-old Minnetonka, Minn., resident feels duped. His insurance company, John Hancock, raised the premiums twice in the past three years.
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People who are 90 or older have nearly tripled in number since 1980, to 1.9 million, according to the first-ever census numbers on the age group. The trend is posing unique health challenges and adding to rising government costs for the strained Medicare and Social Security programs.
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Conservative interest groups and Republican lawmakers want Justice Elena Kagan off the health care case. Liberals and Democrats in Congress say it’s Justice Clarence Thomas who should sit it out.
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Though it reached no agreement, the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction built a case for major structural changes in Medicare that would limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program, lawmakers and health policy experts say.
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In the past two years, many employers already have adopted financial incentives to encourage people to lose weight, join a fitness program or get a physical exam, according to a survey last month by the National Business Group on Health.
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The U.S. health care system is more effective at delivering high costs than quality care, according to a new study that found first-rate treatment for cancer but insufficient primary care for other ailments.
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The optimistically entitled 1997 Balanced Budget Act created a “sustainable growth rate” (SGR) for physician reimbursement that said any increase in total pay for physicians could not exceed the growth rate of the rest of the economy.
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On one side are those advocating for consumers, who want to see the cost of health insurance premiums ease up and customers get rebates if their insurers spend too much on overhead and profits. On the other side are insurance brokers like Spencer Houldin, who help people select insurance policies and handle claims, but say they’re getting squeezed out of business by a key requirement of federal health care reform.
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Health care experts say the move reflects a larger shift toward what the industry calls "consumer-driven" health plans, in which lower premiums and a high deductible encourage consumers to be more conscious of medical care costs and more cautious about undergoing expensive procedures, thus driving down costs for employers.
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Walgreens is among several large chain pharmacy stores to expand and offer health care services within the past several years. Some have opened medical clinics inside their stores as alternatives to crowded doctors’ offices. Others offer programs to help customers, including those with diabetes, manage their chronic health conditions.
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The super committee failed to strike a deficit deal, but the terrain still changed for entitlement reform.
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The Obama administration called on a health insurance company to reduce a planned rate increase in Pennsylvania, using a tool in the new healthcare law for the first time to pressure insurers to restrain rising premiums.
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After a heavy oxygen tank fell on her foot while she was visiting her mother in a nursing home earlier this month, Tamra Williams was in pain all night—but dreaded what she figured would be an hours-long wait in a Dallas hospital emergency room.
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Margaret Fisher is among the millions of seniors with private, supplemental health insurance that takes care of most of the medical bills Medicare doesn’t cover. If she has a health crisis, she reasons, it won’t become a financial crisis, too.
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The failure of the congressional super committee could mean automatic budget cuts totaling billions of dollars for everything from Medicare to biomedical research, starting in 2013. But some health care interests stand to fare better than others.
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One thing is certain: Amid the recession and slow recovery, Americans have less to spend on health care and face bigger deductibles and co-pays. And the census reports that there are more than 5 million additional uninsured than in 2007, the year the recession began.
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With less than three weeks left for seniors to change their Medicare prescription plan for 2012, a study released Wednesday finds co-pays for brand-name drugs are going up — sharply in some cases.
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The breakdown of deficit talks in Congress will exact little pain on the U.S. health care industry, but it’s a temporary reprieve from steeper cuts that could be put back on the table in 2013.
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The super committee’s failure to reach a deficit-reduction agreement puts into motion $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years targeting defense and domestic agency budgets while sparing entitlement programs such as Medicaid.
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Regardless of whether Congress’ super committee meets its deadline for finding ways to reduce the federal deficit, budget and policy experts are braced for Washington soon to face the painful task of finding more savings - and they anticipate that health spending will be at the top of the list.
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At five Bon Secours Health System hospitals on the East Coast, giving fewer blood transfusions during heart surgeries has had some counterintuitive results: Not only did costs fall, but care improved, officials say.
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Regardless of whether Congress’s supercommittee meets its deadline for finding ways to reduce the federal deficit, budget and policy experts are braced for Washington to soon face the painful task of finding even more savings �” and they anticipate that health spending, which makes up more than a fifth of the federal budget, will be a main target.
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There’s little question that Medicare and Medicaid — the two federal health care programs for the elderly, disabled and the poor — are in the supercommittee’s sights along with Social Security cuts.
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The March of Dimes annual report card gives Missouri a grade of C. Rep. Jeff Grisamore (R-Lee’s Summit) says that’s too high, and is working to bring it down. The premature birth rate in Missouri is 12.1 percent, slightly down from the previous total, 12.2 percent.
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The national president of the American Benefits Council is putting his bets on the U.S. Supreme Court deciding that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance mandate is constitutional.
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Reforms meant to streamline military health care for severely wounded service members have in many cases worsened the bureaucracy, causing duplication, confusion and turf battles, according to families, congressional overseers and advocates for veterans.
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Sabrina Oliver looked forward to good schools and safer streets when she moved her family from her crime-ridden and trash-strewn West Baltimore neighborhood to the suburbs, but was surprised to discover another benefit as well - a dramatic improvement in their health.
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State Medicaid directors and health insurers’ trade groups are urging the super committee to give states the option to mandate that most or all dual eligibles be enrolled in private plans that can closely manage their care.
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In-store medical clinics like those at Walmart – having established a beachhead with relatively healthy patients looking for convenient, low-cost care for simple problems – are eyeing a bigger prize, the millions of Americans with costly illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.
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The Chair of a Senate Committee considering how Missouri will prepare for federal health care reform says the most likely action is none at all.
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Charles Barnum weighs himself every morning and the results are sent electronically to his health plan. If he gains or drops more than a pound or two, he gets a call from a nurse to see how he feels. Every few weeks, the plan sends a nurse to his Odessa, Mo., house to check on Barnum.
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More and more employers are demanding that workers who smoke, are overweight or have high cholesterol shoulder a greater share of their health care costs, a shift toward penalizing employees with unhealthy lifestyles rather than rewarding good habits.
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Americans say they don’t like the Affordable Care Act, sometimes derisively called Obamacare, but they don’t want to rescind it.
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The Congressional Budget Office last spring came up with a menu of options for generating savings in the national health care program for the elderly, which the Super Committee could use to help meet its goal of $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction by 2021.
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Julie Haley is coming to the end of an arduous time in her start-up’s business cycle: settling on a health-benefits package for its 24 full-time employees.
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Giving a peek into what a state health insurance exchange might look like, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City has introduced the Kansas City area’s first private insurance exchange.
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Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen faster than incomes in every state in the nation, according to a report released Thursday.
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U.S. workers’ health insurance premiums rose 63 percent from 2003 to 2010 as employers shifted more of the burden of rising medical costs to individuals and families, a study showed.
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The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law in the coming year, charting a course that will have an impact on the 2012 election campaign, the law, the health care industry and the states.
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While there was no surprise over the Supreme Court’s decision Monday to review the 2010 health care act’s insurance mandate, supporters of the law are reeling over the justices’ announcement that they will also consider a long-shot challenge to what many consider an even more central provision of the statute.
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With three weeks left for seniors to change their Medicare prescription plan for 2012, a new study brings distressing news: Copays for brand-name drugs are going up - sharply in some cases.
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A federal appeals court on Wednesday put on hold its ruling that ordered a dramatic overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system, because it wants to reconsider the earlier decision.
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As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance.
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Most people don’t want to think about death, much less plan for it �” especially when they feel healthy and young in their middle-age years. And that, some baby boomers say, is one of the big reasons so few of them have end-of-life legal documents such as a living will.
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A U.S. cable TV network and a senior Republican senator asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to allow its first live broadcast when it hears arguments in the legal dispute over President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care overhaul law.
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A report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, said Missouri will see a slight increase in next year’s funding for mental health treatment and services. Despite this, the report said the state is still in the midst of a mental health crisis.
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The American Medical Association added pressure on U.S. states to steer toward the system that opens doors to all insurers who meet minimum standards as they build up their health insurance exchanges.
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The Obama administration said it cut wasteful or improper payments in social and welfare programs by almost $18 billion in the year that ended Sept. 30. The government reduced errors in Medicare and Medicaid payments, Pell Grant student loans and the Agriculture Department’s food stamp program, the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
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Uninsured Americans tend to be discharged from the hospital somewhat sooner than those with health coverage, regardless of the medical condition itself, a new study finds.
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Anyone tracking the supercommittee has heard the mantra: Everything is on the table. But there’s one big item that doesn’t appear to be on that gigantic deficit-cutting table: President Barack Obama’s health reform law, his signature domestic achievement.
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Some of Missouri’s top elected officials and business leaders are urging Congress not to cap a special health care tax when cutting the federal budget.
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A federal match for the 12 states that expanded their health insurance programs for the poor prior to the passage of health care reform is one of many items being considered for cutbacks as the bipartisan congressional super committee tries to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years.
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The federal health care law requires states to set up an exchange, a mechanism that’s been likened to discount travel aggregator Travelocity. Those who need health insurance could go to the exchange website, input personal information and find the most affordable option to meet their needs.
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No matter what the Supreme Court decides about the constitutionality of the federal law adopted last year, health care in America has changed in ways that will not be easily undone. Provisions already put in place, like tougher oversight of health insurers, the expansion of coverage to one million young adults and more protections for workers with pre-existing conditions are already well cemented and popular.
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At least some of the provisions of the health care reform law are here to stay regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in a challenge to the law, a health care analyst said in Springfield on Monday.
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As hospitals elbow each other to attract patients, increasingly they’re hoping to tap into Americans’ interest in — and willingness to spend money on — complementary and alternative medical therapies such as acupuncture and massage.
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President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul divided the nation from the day he signed it into law, and that seems unlikely to change no matter how the Supreme Court rules on its constitutionality.
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More than 17 percent of Adults don’t have health care coverage, according to a Gallup poll. Some polled blame high unemployment. That being said, across our nation people are still scratching their heads when it comes to The Affordable Care Act - or health care reform.
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About 200 medications are on the FDA’s drug shortage page. Sometimes manufacturing problems are to blame, but economic issues also play a role.
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By agreeing today to hear challenges to President Obama’s 2010 health care law, the Supreme Court set the stage for a decision - probably in late June and in the midst of the presidential campaign - that could be among its most important in decades.
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The Supreme Court is ready to consider next year the legality of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation, an overhaul of the U.S. health care system.
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The Supreme Court decided on Monday to review President Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul, promising a high-profile hearing on the question dominating American politics: the constitutional limits of the federal government’s power.
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The Supreme Court agreed today to decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care law and its requirement that all Americans have basic health insurance by 2014.
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One way to save Medicare money is to gradually boost the eligibility age from 65 to 67, eventually aligning it with the older Social Security age being phased in.
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It’s not unusual for a patient to change doctors. Doctors retire, families move, insurance changes. And sometimes, patients get fired. "Discharging parents from a practice is never easy," says Thomas Tryon, a pediatrician at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo.
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Give people free prescription drugs and many of them still won’t bother to take their medicine. Doctors were stunned to see that happen in a major study involving heart attack survivors.
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Doctors and patients agree on many of the key issues facing the future of health care, a study released Tuesday shows, but that’s where much of the agreement ends. Doctors believe patients receive the preventive care they need about half the time; patients, meanwhile, believe they receive such about one-third of the time.
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Schuler’s a counselor for veterans who are having financial problems. And it was that same impulse — to help veterans — that brought him to a VA Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., on a recent morning. Schuler came to take part in something called the Million Veteran Program, or MVP. The idea is to build a huge database, with both medical histories and blood samples from 1 million U.S. veterans
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Two representatives from the Missouri Foundation for Health will be at Missouri State University at 7 tonight for a town hall discussion about the new health reform law.
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In the scramble to come up with a deficit-reduction deal by Thanksgiving, members of Capitol Hill’s supercommittee appear to have one group squarely in their crosshairs: high-income Medicare beneficiaries.
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The Obama administration on Monday said $1 billion of federal funds allocated in last year’s health reform law will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care.
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The Obama administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers. Grants can go to doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
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M.C. Kim had four heart attacks in as many years. Each time, he left the hospital not knowing why his heart had failed. When he tried to enter a cardiac rehabilitation program to learn how to reduce the odds of having more heart trouble, the Medicare office told him to call Medicaid. The Medicaid office told him to call Medicare. In the end, he said, both denied coverage.
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Instead of a doctor seeing patients mostly when they’re sick — and the physician is getting paid for that visit or service — this program gives financial rewards to practices that use a team of doctors, nurses and other staff to treat the whole person on a continuing basis, not just for one illness.
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In the scramble to come up with a deficit-reduction deal by Thanksgiving, members of Capitol Hill’s super committee appear to have one group squarely in their cross hairs: high-income Medicare beneficiaries.
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Justices are expected to announce as soon as Monday that they will hear a challenge to President Obama’s landmark legislation, which bears the surprising approval of prominent conservative judges.
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Contractors paid tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to detect fraudulent Medicare claims are using inaccurate and inconsistent data that makes it extremely difficult to catch bogus bills submitted by crooks, according to an inspector general’s report released Monday.
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The percentage of adults with no health insurance is the highest on record, with 17.3 percent of adults being uninsured in the third quarter of 2011, statistically tying the high set in the second quarter, Gallup found. Three years ago, in the third quarter of 2008, only 14.4 percent of adults lacked health insurance.
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The lobbying clout of doctors is being tested by a 27 percent Medicare fee cut that Congress may be unable to reverse as lawmakers grapple with proposals to pare the deficit by $1.2 trillion.
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A recent survey of nearly 2,000 parents suggests a federal health insurance program designed to help those who require financial aid is working.

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Judy Baker, the regional director of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, spends part of her time visiting communities in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska to promote the Affordable Care Act
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State Medicaid directors are asking the federal government to fast-track state Medicaid improvements by emphasizing health over bureaucratic process and rapidly disseminating best practices so that states can benefit from the success of others.
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When the Kansas City Star used a federal database this summer to investigate the way doctors are monitored in the region, and matched anonymous records from the database to a specific doctor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responded by, among other things, restricting access to the entire public database.
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Like many others her age, 60-year-old Mary Ann Mason fell through one of the biggest trap doors in the American health care system: She’s too young for Medicare, with too much retirement income to qualify for Medicaid or similar low-income insurance programs, and with one too many health problems to buy an affordable individual plan on the open market.
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After weeks of protests by journalists, academic researchers, patient safety advocates and a U.S. senator, federal health officials on Wednesday reopened a public website containing data on the malpractice and disciplinary histories of thousands of the nation’s doctors.
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Many Missourians say they don’t like the new health care reform law, but when asked, residents also say they like specific parts of the law.
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Modest increases in some states’ mental health budgets have done little to erase massive cuts nationwide over the past three years and a reduction in Medicaid funds, according to a report to be released Thursday by the nation’s largest mental health advocacy group.
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More than two months after taking over in-home-care assessments on an emergency basis, many of the more than 1,100 people considered “urgent cases” are still waiting for help, the director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said today.
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Wal-Mart may expand on its 140 in-store health clinics by partnering with outside vendors to provide chronic and preventative health care services for everything from HIV and diabetes to pregnancy testing.
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Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is exploring ways to expand the kinds of healthcare services it offers at dozens of stores across the country, potentially setting the stage to turn the nation’s largest retailer into a major primary care service provider and drive down costs for millions of Americans.
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Patients put a certain trust in doctors, that they’ll provide the best medical care possible. But what happens when that trust is broken? The Kansas City Star recently used a federal database of physician reports to examine just that: how doctors with a history of alleged malpractice are monitored in the region.
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A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the Obama administration’s health care law on Tuesday in a decision written by a prominent conservative jurist.
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A database of doctor discipline and malpractice records blocked by the Obama administration in September was made public again today with new restrictions for anyone who wants to use it.
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The case is shaping up to be the most contentious at the Supreme Court in more than a decade, but everyone involved agrees at least on one point: They need to know as soon as possible whether the new health care law is constitutional.
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In a 2 to 1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that Congress acted within its authority to regulate interstate commerce when it required virtually all Americans to obtain insurance or pay a penalty.
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The Obama administration is now three for four at the appellate level when it comes to rulings on its sweeping health care legislation, as a District of Columbia panel determined Tuesday that the law is constitutional.
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Public employers can find savings on healthcare costs and still deliver high-quality benefits, according a study released on Tuesday.
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A conservative-leaning appeals court panel on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care law, as the Supreme Court prepares to consider this week whether to resolve conflicting rulings over the law’s requirement that all Americans buy health care insurance.
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They call it “the match.” Every year, thousands of graduate students in clinical psychology pick the hospitals and clinics where they would like to do yearlong internships. They rank their choices. The internship programs also rank the applicants.
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Three weeks after suffering a heart attack, Bernie Hollander came to a recent meeting at Leisure World in Silver Spring with his wife, Rose, to learn about the Medicare drug plans being offered next year.
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Just as 55 million Social Security recipients are about to get their first benefit increase in three years, Congress is looking at reducing future raises by adopting a new measure of inflation that also would increase taxes for most families — the biggest impact falling on those with low incomes.
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When Marcia Price was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic for a bone marrow transplant, she was surprised to get a hug from a receptionist who saw the "sheer fear" on her face.
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In a bid to win support for health reform from skeptical doctors back in 2009, President Barack Obama pledged action on an item near the top of their wish list — malpractice reform. And he delivered an initial step: $25 million to test alternatives to the medical liability system.
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Winning praise from patients has become a pressing — and often elusive — obsession for NYU and for hospitals nationwide. In the coming months, Medicare will start taking patient satisfaction into account when reimbursing hospitals.
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Congress’ so-called deficit reduction "supercommittee" is down to the final weeks of deliberations in its efforts to come up with $1.2 trillion in budget savings. And one proposal that keeps cropping up is the idea of raising the eligibility age for Medicare.
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At least six states have opened their Children’s Health Insurance Programs to the kids of low-income state employees, an option that was prohibited until the passage of the 2010 health law.
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Like many states and local governments struggling to cut costs, Michigan hopes to replace some government employees with contract workers who will do the same job for less.
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The so-called CLASS Act, which even supporters acknowledge had design flaws, would have allowed workers to voluntarily buy a long-term care policy regardless of their health. The benefit wasn’t huge, but it might have been enough to allow some seniors to remain in their homes. And it was better than nothing — which is what most people have now.
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Over the past two decades, venture capitalists helped make possible striking advances in health care, including robotic surgery, cancer vaccines and genomics. But such innovations also fuel higher health-care spending, and now private investors see new opportunities in betting on companies that could curb those costs.
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The American Geriatrics Society says today there’s roughly one geriatrician for every 2,600 people 75 and older. Without a drastic change in the number of doctors choosing the specialty, the ratio is projected to fall to one geriatrician for every 3,800 older Americans by 2030.
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From insurance companies to drug stores to doctors, just about any industry that touches the health care system has a different opinion on how the Obama administration should shape the new insurance markets at the heart of the health-care reform law.
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It’s open enrollment season for many employer-sponsored health plans. Employees look for the most cost-effective option that promises high quality health care, and employers attempt to control their costs. Meanwhile, those who seek insurance in the individual market are simply looking for affordable health coverage.
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Medicare says seniors with high prescription costs have saved more than $1 billion thanks to the new health care law.

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For insurance companies nervously watching the legal fight over the constitutionality of the president’s health care law, it would be the unthinkable: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the law’s so-called individual mandate, which requires millions of young, healthy people to buy coverage - but leaves intact rules compelling insurers to cover sick people, who are likely to cost far more in benefits than they pay in premiums.
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Some of the federal health care law’s requirements related to insurance exchanges threaten the autonomy of U.S. states, which need more support in establishing the marketplaces, state governors said in a letter released on Thursday.
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Increasing “in-between” contact between doctors and their patients could help reduce overall health care costs by making patients healthier and better informed.
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A group of Medicare patients and their families sued the Obama administration on Thursday, saying they were deprived of coverage by the government health plan because of a policy that allows hospitals to avoid admitting elderly people with chronic ailments as inpatients.
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Health insurance premiums for people buying coverage through small-employer markets will increase by as much as 3.7 percent, or $3,100, over 10 years as a new tax takes effect in 2014, a study by U.S. insurers found.
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Next year the Community Counseling Center in Cape Girardeau will use a delivery concept set out in the federal health care reform law with hopes of improving care for low-income patients while saving money. Missouri is the first state to be approved by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to use the Health Home model.
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After Ronald Sanders’ wife died in 2005 — because of a medicine given to her that caused irreversible brain damage, he said — he sued.
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When Wayne Johnson flew missions in Vietnam in the 1960s, one of the allures of a military career was the pledge that those who risked their lives for the United States would be repaid with health care in old age.
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It’s become a regular exercise in budget brinksmanship. Medicare is again warning that doctors face draconian pay cuts on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts. Officials said Tuesday it works out to a 27.4 percent cut.
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Medicare payments for outpatient services will rise 1.9 percent to $41 billion and dialysis clinics, cancer centers and ambulatory surgery facilities also are scheduled to receive modest fee increases from the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled under regulations issued yesterday.
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The National Association of Medicaid Directors has submitted comments to federal officials regarding three proposed regulations dealing with upcoming changes in Medicaid eligibility that stem from the federal health reform law passed in 2010.
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Medicare inspectors must do a better job of tracking reports of serious mistakes in care at the nation’s hospitals, as well as of informing rating agencies of the errors, according to a report released Tuesday by the agency’s inspector general.
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Since the state took over for SynCare in September, patients needing in-home care have begun to be evaluated more quickly. The change is welcomed by many, but some are still waiting for a visit from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
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In August, the Illinois Department of Revenue moved to revoke the property tax exemptions enjoyed by three major nonprofit hospitals after a court ruling determined that a fourth hospital in the state did not provide enough charity care to justify the tax benefit.
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Fenton-based Maritz built its reputation by showing other corporations how to set goals and motivate people to meet them. Now the company is encouraging its workers to set a few personal goals. They are being offered the chance to earn cash for losing weight and remaining healthy.
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The health care reform law gives federal health officials a new mandate to address the fact that racial and ethnic minorities tend to be sicker than the rest of the population. But there are limits to what they can actually do about the problem.
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A car accident opened Paul Winter’s eyes to his career choice. His dad was struck by a vehicle and was taken to St. Mary’s hospital for treatment. There, the man Winter would remember as his dad’s doctor turned out to be a physician assistant. Watching the medic go about his work made an impression on young Winter, so much so that he grew up to become a physician assistant, too.
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For many adults, a routine visit to a primary care physician might involve blood tests, a urinalysis, an electrocardiogram, maybe a bone density scan. Too often, however, these tests are inappropriate and they cost a bundle, according to a recent study, not only for the health care system but also for individuals, who are increasingly footing more of the bill for their care.
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A lawsuit challenging Maine’s authority over health insurers’ profit margins is drawing national attention from state regulators worried about the impact on their power to hold down rate increases.
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Unprecedented drug shortages are threatening the lives of cancer patients and other seriously ill people, and the Obama administration’s plan to tackle them is but a small step toward solving a complex problem.
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Medicare payments to home health agencies such as Amedisys Inc. and Gentiva Health Services Inc. would fall by more than $400 million, or 2.3 percent, in 2012 under a U.S. regulation issued today.
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President Obama will issue an executive order on Monday that the administration hopes will help resolve a growing number of critical shortages of vital medicines used to treat life-threatening illnesses, among them several forms of cancer and bacterial infections.
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Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.
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A cancer diagnosis can come as a shock, but what happens next may be even more surprising. The country faces a critical shortage of many chemotherapy drugs, forcing some patients to delay their treatments or switch medications.

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Regardless of whether there was overbilling, as Barton suspects, or simply a difference of opinion about the level of care needed, hospice costs in general have risen sharply in recent years, prompting the federal government to crack down on waste and prosecute fraud.
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Ambulance services might gain legal protection from releasing documents about problems with care and mistakes by working with the Missouri Center for Patient Safety.
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Gillham’s suicide at the the Cox North psychiatric facility is what the health care profession sometimes calls a "never event," tragedies that are not supposed to happen in a health care setting. Such events also include surgery performed on the wrong patient or a woman dying in labor during a low-risk pregnancy.
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The government says Medicare’s basic monthly premium will rise less than expected next year, by $3.50 for most. At $99.90 per month, the 2012 Part B premium for outpatient care will be about $7 less than projected as recently as May. The additional money that most seniors will pay works out to about 10 percent of the average Social Security cost-of-living increase they’ll also be due.
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The American Medical Group Association represents premier organizations like the Mayo Clinic, the models for the proposed "accountable care organizations" in Obama’s health care overhaul law. The networks of doctors and hospitals will collaborate to keep patients healthier.

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Despite new government subsidies, doctors’ offices are struggling to fulfill a federal mandate to switch to electronic medical records.
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Crippling medical debt isn’t just for the uninsured. Even those with health insurance can be hit with a mountain of debt from an accident.
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States will have to spend more on the health program for the poor to offset the loss of $100 billion in U.S. funds authorized by the 2009 economic stimulus law and to accommodate higher enrollment due to the flagging economy, according to an annual survey of Medicaid officials released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Most Medicare beneficiaries will pay $99.90 a month in premiums in 2012, a smaller-than-expected increase of $3.50, federal officials said Thursday.
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State Medicaid spending is projected to grow by an average of 29 percent in the budget year that began July 1, the biggest increase in the history of the federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled, according to a report released Thursday.
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The bill, which passed 262-157, fixes a widely cited glitch in the law’s expansion of Medicaid that would have allowed up to 3 million middle-class couples earning as much as $64,000 onto the already struggling Medicaid rolls starting in 2014.
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Cutting Medicaid by 5 percent would cost U.S. states $14 billion and trigger job losses in the tens of thousands by depressing spending by states, hospitals, nursing homes, drug companies and others, a study said on Wednesday.
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The Supreme Court could decide Nov. 10 whether it will review President Barack Obama’s health care reform law this term.
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CMS this month revised the way it rates Medicare drug plans to focus more on quality, and many plans’ ratings fell from 2011 to 2012. The criteria changed to stress clinical outcomes, such as whether a patient takes his medication the way he is supposed to, in addition to process measures, such as how long a patient is kept on hold when calling the plan.
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Missouri will soon be the first in the nation to try out a new approach for caring for people with both mental and physical health disorders.
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Nationally, federal officials have given negative assessments to more than a quarter of Medicare’s rated prescription drug plans that will be available to seniors in 2012.
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Six cases involving President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul legislation are pending before the Supreme Court as part of the legal battle over the law’s fate.
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Signing up for health insurance during your company’s annual enrollment period, which for many plans is right now, may feel like taking a nasty dose of medicine: You know it’s good for you, but it sure doesn’t go down easy.
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Growing numbers of employers and insurance companies, stung by continued hikes in healthcare costs, are offering employees money and merchandise to lead healthier lives. Advocates of the approach are betting that preventive action will keep workers productive and hold down healthcare bills for expensive diseases like cancer and diabetes.
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The law that many Americans had hoped would transform the nation’s dysfunctional system of long-term care for the swelling ranks of people with disabilities and dementia quietly died this month, a victim of its own weaknesses, a toxic political environment and President Obama’s re-election campaign focus on jobs.
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If health reform’s long-term care insurance program dies, it’s not clear what would replace it. The Obama administration decided two weeks ago to suspend implementation of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act.

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Beginning next year, Missouri will take a new approach to serving residents with mental health, substance abuse and other chronic conditions. These residents will all be served through what’s known as a "health home" model. It means providers - ranging from primary care doctors to counselors - will be able to share the same data on each patient and provide better coordinated care.
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In the latest sign of how desperate they are to control rising Medicaid costs, a small but growing number of states are sharply limiting hospital coverage — to as few as 10 days a year.
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A nursing home can cost more than $200 a day and a home health aide averages $450 a week, usually part-time. Yet long-term care is one major health expense for which nearly all Americans are uninsured. Only about 3 percent of adults have their own policy, and Medicare doesn’t cover it.
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Forming teams that can help the chronically or terminally ill has show tremendous benefit and is a growing field. But questions, mostly about costs, remain.
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A nursing home can cost more than $200 a day and a home health aide averages $450 a week, usually part-time. Yet long-term care is one major health expense for which nearly all Americans are uninsured. Only about 3 percent of adults have their own policy, and Medicare doesn’t cover it.
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If the Supreme Court decides to review President Barack Obama’s health reform law, it will also have to choose which issues it wants to hear — and that decision could have a significant impact on the law’s final fate.
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States are using a variety of strategies to control rising Medicaid costs even as they look ahead to a massive expansion of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor beginning in 2014.
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As open enrollment for health insurance approaches, employees can expect the same-old same-old — paying more for less coverage. The real cost of health insurance will rise an average of 7.1 percent nationally for 2012, based on early results from a Mercer survey of employers.
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A growing number of states are sharply limiting hospital stays under Medicaid to as few as 10 days a year to control rising costs of the health insurance program for the poor and disabled.
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The key provisions of the federal health overhaul take effect in 2014, including a requirement for most people to have health insurance; a ban on insurance companies considering individuals’ health status when they sell plans; and the creation of new health coverage marketplaces called "exchanges."
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With the number of estimated uninsured Americans now at 50 million and as the country continues to try to break free of the most recent economic recession, more residents are looking to their local faith leaders to help them navigate the bureaucracy of health care.
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Republicans and Democrats alike are signaling a willingness to make military retirees pay more for coverage. It’s a reflection of Washington’s newfound embrace of fiscal austerity and the Pentagon’s push to cut health care costs that have skyrocketed from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion.
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Only 16 percent of employers offer health insurance to part-timers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s most recent Employer Health Benefits Survey. The number increases to 42 percent among large employers.
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It’s open-enrollment season, that time of year when most companies roll out changes to their benefit offerings. Employees typically have a few weeks to elect their packages for the upcoming year.
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc will no longer offer health insurance to new part-time U.S. employees who work fewer than 24 hours a week and will charge workers who use tobacco more for coverage as healthcare costs rise, the company said on Friday.
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Federal officials say Missouri is the first state in the nation to get approval for a special health care coordination program under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
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A new Medicaid program will bring expanded services to about 15,000 people in need of mental health and substance abuse care in Missouri, federal officials said Friday.
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Just yesterday, the White House released regulations aimed at getting those health care costs under control. It’s a move to establish something called Accountable Care Organizations, which would fundamentally change how doctors and hospitals get paid.
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From allergic reactions to cracked teeth, thousands crowded the Los Angeles Arena to receive free medical care. But many people who showed up aren’t covered for all the care they need.
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Families with special needs kids can save up to a third of their out-of pocket medical expenses by having a so-called "medical home" coordinate the care for their child, a news study suggests.
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The federal government laid out on Thursday final rules for a new program that aims to improve patient care by getting doctors, hospitals and other care providers to work together more.
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Avery Shapiro has had tooth pain for several years. Pat Morris’ dental insurance wouldn’t cover the tab for a filling. Chenell Bass had to stop driving because her eyesight got so weak. Such stories were typical among the first 1,200 people filing into a huge free medical clinic that opened Thursday at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

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The Obama administration moved Thursday to salvage a much-touted initiative in the new healthcare law aimed at controlling costs, revising regulations to encourage doctors, clinics and hospitals to take greater responsibility for improving patients’ care.
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For 2012, as always, employees can expect changes — and not just because of the ever-present cost increases or shifting benefits. Your employer could be offering a new kind of plan.
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The Obama administration Thursday released its much-awaited final rule for Medicare accountable care organizations, which make it easier for doctors and hospitals to participate by cutting in half the number of performance measurements, removing the electronic health records requirement and eliminating financial risks for some groups.
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The Obama administration and challengers of the president’s health care overhaul are pushing for Supreme Court consideration of the law in late March, judging by the speed with which they are filing legal papers.

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A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit will hear arguments in St. Paul on whether to revive a lawsuit brought by two Missouri residents.
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The experiment was initially aimed at researching whether moving impoverished families to more prosperous areas could improve employment or schooling. But according to a study released Wednesday, the most interesting effect may have been on the women’s physical condition.
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The U.S. health care system has improved, but it continues to fall short in reducing avoidable deaths, curbing health insurance waste and cutting preventable hospital admissions, according to a "scorecard" issued Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund at a conference in Washington, D.C.
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The Obama administration moved Tuesday to roll back numerous rules that apply to hospitals and other health care providers after concluding that the standards were obsolete or overly burdensome to the industry.
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The U.S. health care system is lagging further and further behind other industrialized countries on major measures of quality, efficiency and access to care, according to a new report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, a leading health policy foundation.
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Health officials on Tuesday proposed loosening some Medicare rules in what they say could lead to $1.1 billion in first-year savings as part of President Barack Obama’s effort to cut federal red tape.
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Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder accused Gov. Jay Nixon on Tuesday of risking the lives of seniors and the disabled by acting too slowly to reduce a backlog of residents awaiting state approval for in-home care services.
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Thirty years after its inclusion as a Medicare benefit, hospice is having a bit of a midlife crisis. Changes in whom it serves, where it serves them and for how long are affecting the bottom line, in ways that may accelerate trends that are already reshaping end-of-life care.
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The state’s senior advocate, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, is criticizing how state health officials are handling a continuing backlog of Medicaid recipients being assessed for in-home health care.
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New hospital data show an increase in emergency room visits, a jump physicians attribute to both a swelling of demand for services and improvements that allow emergency departments to treat patients faster.
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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appears to be headed into the 2012 GOP presidential primary season as the consistent, if not overwhelming, favorite for his party’s nomination. But there remains great discomfort among a wide swath of party members over the striking similarity of the Massachusetts health care reform legislation Romney signed in 2006 as governor, and the federal health care overhaul President Obama put his signature on last year.
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Medicare has begun publishing patient safety ratings for thousands of hospitals as the first step toward paying less to institutions with high rates of surgical complications, infections, mishaps and potentially avoidable deaths.
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The White House appeared to waffle Monday on the fate of a financially troubled long-term care program in President Barack Obama’s health overhaul law, as supporters and foes heaped criticism on the administration.
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The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will hear arguments this week in Kinder’s challenge to the federal health law. Lawyers representing both Kinder and the federal government are scheduled to present their case in St. Paul, Minnesota this Thursday.
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Federal funding for medical research, disease prevention and a host of public health initiatives could be sharply reduced if the congressional super committee fails to agree on a deficit-reduction package, triggering automatic cuts.
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A handful of states are pursuing health measures that go far beyond the Obama administration’s signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act.
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More than a year after thousands lined up at the Los Angeles Sport Arena for a free medical clinic, many remain without health care — trying to outrun, or just ignore, illness.
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This year’s Medicare open-enrollment period — when the 47 million Americans who use the program can make changes in their 2012 coverage — starts this weekend and runs through Dec. 7. Last year, it began on Nov. 15 and ended Dec. 31.
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The Obama administration said Friday it wouldn’t implement a long-term care insurance program that is part of the 2010 health overhaul, its first major reversal on its signature domestic achievement.
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The CLASS program to provide long-term care insurance will not be implemented because it wouldn’t be financially sustainable, says the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Starting in 2014, area students can enroll at a nationally ranked pharmacy school without leaving the Ozarks. University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy is setting up a 30-student satellite program at Missouri State University, a partnership much welcomed by local health care leaders.
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Blue Shield of California says it will give customers in the state a $283-million credit on their insurance premiums, saying it is fulfilling a promise to return money to policyholders when its net income exceeds 2% of revenue.
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Federal officials on Friday effectively shut down part of the health care law that would have helped consumers cover some long-term care costs, saying they could not find a way to make it work financially.
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The Obama administration cut a major planned benefit from the 2010 health care law on Friday, announcing that a program to offer Americans insurance for long-term care was simply unworkable.
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People with eating disorders like anorexia have opened up a new battleground in the insurance wars, testing the boundaries of laws mandating equivalent coverage for mental illnesses.
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Missouri Foundation for Health policy director Ryan Barker has been talking to people throughout Missouri about the federal health care reform what that means for them.
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The annual enrollment period for Medicare Advantage and prescription drug benefit plans starts Saturday, rather than in mid-November as in recent years. The deadline for enrollment has also been pushed up, from Dec. 31 to Dec. 7.
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Wells Fargo & Co, one of the largest U.S. employers, plans to cut costs by moving its workers into insurance plans that encourage them to spend less on health care.
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When patients leave the hospital, it doesn’t mean they’re cured. If they don’t take their medicine, improve their diet or get check-ups, they can end up back in the hospital. More than any other hospital in the region, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in the Central West End struggles with high numbers of returning patients.
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The American Diabetes Association and the American Lung Association have added their voices to groups concerned about the harm potential Medicaid cuts would have on chronically ill blacks and Latinos.
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As a result of stimulus spending and increased funding through the 2010 health care law, the number of clinicians participating in a federal program to expand access to care in under-served communities has nearly tripled in the past three years.
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Nine Medicare Advantage plans scored top marks on the five-star government rating system for 2012, up from only three plans this year, according to new figures posted by Medicare Wednesday.
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The congressional "super committee" charged with reducing U.S. budget deficits is considering tackling a measure that could make their job even harder by preventing a steep pay cut for Medicare doctors.
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Mercy, a health care provider based in Chesterfield, announced plans Tuesday night for a $290 million expansion into St. Charles County, including a new hospital, and the building of a $90 million virtual care center in Chesterfield.

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The State Department of Insurance says the Medicare open enrollment period is a time when con artists will step up their efforts to take advantage of seniors. The period is October 15 through December 7.
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The U.S. may save as much as $125 billion over a decade if health insurers manage care for about 9 million people now covered by Medicare because of their age and Medicaid because they’re poor, the companies have told Congress.
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A bill authorizing a $6.5 million veterans’ outpatient clinic in Springfield was signed into law by President Barack Obama last week. The clinic was proposed as part of the Department of Veterans Affairs Strategic Capital Investment Program, and it is projected to open in the fall of 2014.
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When it comes to medicine, as many as half of Americans don’t stick to their regimens. They fail to fill about 20% to 30% of prescriptions written by doctors, don’t take drugs as directed, and don’t refill medications when they run out.
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Medicare supplemental health plans, popular among politically powerful retirees, could come under the budget knife being wielded by the special deficit-reduction panel of Congress, according to sources keeping close watch on its work.
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It’s a long-term care plan the Obama administration has put on hold, fearing it could go bust if actually implemented. Yet while the program exists on paper, monthly premiums the government may never collect count as reducing federal deficits.
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The National Academy of Sciences said Thursday that the federal government should explicitly consider cost as a factor in deciding what health benefits must be provided by insurance plans under President Obama’s health care overhaul, and it said the cost of any new benefits should be “offset by savings” elsewhere in the health care system.
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Beginning Thursday, consumers across the country can click their state on a federal Web page to see if a health insurer has raised its rates, as well as the company’s reason for doing so.
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A medical and dental center in Benton will officially open its doors later this month. SEMO Health Network’s Benton Medical and Dental Center, at 6724 Highway 77 E next to Dollar General, will open with a ribbon cutting Oct. 17.
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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.
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An advisory panel of experts on Thursday recommended that the Obama administration emphasize affordability over breadth of coverage when it comes to implementing a key insurance provision of the 2010 health care law.
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The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation’s health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Thursday.
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An advisory group urged U.S. officials to formulate a set of essential health benefits under President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul that is in line with cost of insurance in a typical small employer plan.
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Minority and low-income groups continue to be less likely to have a regular source of health care when compared to the general population, despite efforts over the past decade to remedy the situation.
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The applications poured in, spurred by millions of dollars in new funding included in the health law to expand primary care to the poor. A record 810 groups sought federal grants to staff and equip hundreds of new and existing community health centers.
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Four years ago, twelve-year old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache. Extreme neglect had led to an abscess that spread to his brain and killed him. The Drivers were a desperately poor family in Maryland that had trouble locating an oral surgeon who would work for Medicaid rates.
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These taxes account for a sizeable portion of the revenues states raise every year to pay for their share of the $370 billion Medicaid program.
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The applications poured in, spurred by millions of dollars in new funding included in the health law to expand primary care to the poor. A record 810 groups sought federal grants to staff and equip hundreds of new and existing community health centers
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Missouri is one of only two states that doesn’t track health insurance rates. But under the federal healthcare law, health insurance companies now have to tell the federal government about rate increases.
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The nation’s worst hospitals treat twice the proportion of elderly black patients and poor patients than the best hospitals, and their patients are more likely to die of heart attacks and pneumonia, new research shows.
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Nearly 20 percent of the more than 2 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mental health conditions, according to a new report.
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A Congressman investigating worsening shortages of hospital drugs is demanding that secondary drug distributors reveal where they’re getting scarce, lifesaving medicines - and explain the huge markups they charge hospitals.
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Companies that buy up critical drugs in short supply and resell them to hospitals and pharmacies at a markup of as much as 80 times their price are under investigation by a U.S. lawmaker challenging the practice.
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One hour can spell the difference between life and death for victims of severe injury, but about a quarter of Americans now have to travel farther to reach the nearest hospital trauma center, a study published Wednesday concludes. The reason: Hundreds of trauma centers have closed over the past two decades.
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While the impending Supreme Court debate over President Barack Obama’s health law is steeped in politics, a ruling striking down a piece of the health care law would have significant policy implications, too.
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As steward of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, Donald Berwick is leading a charge to cut errors and increase efficiency. But time for such measures may be running out.
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The future is increasingly uncertain for the CLASS Act, a controversial long-term care insurance program created by the 2010 federal health law and championed by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
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Missouri health care providers led the nation last year in getting shortchanged by the Medicare program, according to a new federal audit.
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Dietz is part of an effort to standardize the information given to patients with heart failure and those who care for them, using short instructional films that will soon be available free on the Internet.
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The U.S. Supreme Court opened its new term Monday with an important Medicaid case that could impact poor people, facilities that provide care and financially strapped states that reimburse providers under the joint federal-state program.
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Medicare — one of the most popular programs ever devised by the federal government — is on the chopping block.
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The high court begins its new term Monday, and President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, which affects almost everyone in the country, is squarely in its sights.
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Starting now, Vermont begins building a single-payer health system that will move many state residents into a publicly financed insurance program and pay hospitals, doctors and other providers a set fee to care for patients.
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The justices could make decisions on President Obama’s health care law, enforcement of immigration laws and affirmative action in higher education.
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The state of Virginia plans to ask the Supreme Court to overturn a recent decision in its challenge to the federal healthcare reform law, its attorney general said on Friday.
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Military retirees will pay slightly more for their health care starting tomorrow, and more cost increases are on the way. Premiums haven’t been raised since 1994 and still will be just a fraction of what civilians pay.
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Orthopedic surgeons are much more hesitant to see kids with broken bones than they were a decade ago, suggests new research from California.
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Truman Medical Center was seeing too many of its heart patients discharged with no place to go for the exercise and diet advice they needed. Two years ago, the hospital opened a cardiac rehabilitation center with treadmills and nutrition classes.

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The 2010 health care overhaul law has provoked an unprecedented clash between the federal government and 26 states, dividing them on fundamental questions about the very structure of the federal system. But the two sides share a surprising amount of common ground, too, starting with their agreement in briefs, filed on Wednesday, that the Supreme Court should resolve the clash in its current term.
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A key recommendation for medical coverage standards under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will be released on Oct. 7, according to the organization preparing the report.
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The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear a case concerning the 2010 health care overhaul law. The development, which came unexpectedly fast, makes it all but certain that the court will soon agree to hear one or more cases involving challenges to the law, with arguments by the spring and a decision by June.
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The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to decide the fate of its health-care overhaul, setting the stage for arguments at the high court and a probable ruling in the thick of the 2012 presidential campaign.
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Jackson County is getting a big funding boost to fight chronic diseases. As KCUR’s Elana Gordon reports, the area’s three health departments have been awarded a multi-year federal grant to take on the root causes of such health problems.
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A small-business group opposed to the health care overhaul is asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entire law, not just the core requirement to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.
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About one in six Medicare patients is readmitted to the hospital within a month of being discharged, indicating room for improvement before financial penalties for high readmission rates kick in next year, a large study found.
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Most baby boomers say they’re planning on an active and healthy retirement, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. And, in a switch from earlier years, more than two-thirds recognize the threat of long-term care expenses to their financial futures.
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Government health benefits for some 9 million of the sickest and poorest U.S. citizens will come under scrutiny from the congressional "super committee" seeking to cut the nation’s debt.
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States and a business group opposed to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday for a speedy ruling that puts an end to the law aimed at extending insurance coverage to more than 30 million people.
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The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs.
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Bryan Schearer had great odds for a quick recovery when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November. After six months of chemotherapy with a four-drug cocktail, he’d have as much as a 90 percent chance of a cure.
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Employers picked up most of the cost, but workers continued to struggle to keep up with the growth in their share, which has far outpaced any growth in earnings.
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Premiums for employer-provided health insurance jumped 8-9 percent in 2011, passing $15,000 for family coverage �” which is more than the cost of a Ford Fiesta. That’s a big jump from the 3 percent increase in 2010. But it’s in line with historical increases that have averaged just over 10 percent per year since 2001.
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Last October, executives from some of the largest and most prestigious children’s hospitals gathered in Philadelphia to talk about the future of children’s care. Panel topics ranged from the impact of the federal health overhaul law on children’s hospitals to the nation’s debt crisis and the significant role that health spending plays in it.
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Health care premiums are at a record high – up nine percent since last year. A survey released Tuesday shows the average family is now paying over 15 thousand dollars a year on health care premiums.
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After modest increases last year, the cost of job-based health insurance for families and individuals has jumped sharply this year, even though insurers are paying less in benefits as cash-strapped American workers opt for less medical care.
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In 2011, for the first time, half of workers at small firms with individual policies faced annual deductibles of $1,000 or more. In 2006, that figure was 16 percent. At large firms, the share has grown from 6 percent to 22 percent over the same five years.
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U.S. hospitals risk cuts in Medicare payments next year after failing to reduce avoidable readmissions, a Dartmouth Atlas Project study showed. The report tracked 10.7 million discharges at 1,925 hospitals from 2004 to 2009 and found that readmissions of elderly patients within 30 days of a hospital stay have remained the same or increased.
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Employers’ spending on health coverage for workers spiked abruptly this year, with the average cost of a family plan rising by 9 percent, triple the growth seen in 2010. Family plan premiums hit $15,073 on average, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.
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The Obama administration has decided not to ask a federal appeals court in Atlanta for further review of a ruling striking down the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care overhaul. The administration’s decision makes it more likely that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear a case on the health care overhaul in the court’s term starting next month.
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Tracy Burden’s last name is almost too fitting. The 43-year-old Kansas City, Kan., resident showed up early Saturday morning at Foster Dental Care in Blue Springs in the hopes of getting a good spot for some important work.
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Nearly 1,500 waivers later, the Obama administration’s controversial effort to free some companies from the burdens of the new health care law is coming to an end.
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The Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional.
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Around 200 dentist volunteered Friday and Saturday to provide dental care to hundreds of Missourians who otherwise might not have been able to obtain the care.
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A brewing health care storm threatens to reach historic proportions when the aging baby-boomer population and expansion of the federal Medicare program in 2014 converge to create a flood of patients that could overwhelm the dwindling ranks of aging family physicians.
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As many as a million young adults have signed up for health insurance in the past year, new data indicate, suggesting the success of an early benefit of the health care law President Barack Obama signed last year.
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White House lawyers could try to speed up or slow down the process of seeking to have the Supreme Court decide on the constitutionality of the president’s health care law.
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Prevention has never been the cornerstone of American medicine. In this country, we tend to go to the doctor only when something is wrong, a habit long bemoaned by researchers and medical groups. The federal government aims to change that.
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The cost of providing health benefits next year may increase by the smallest percentage in 15 years. Employers could see a 5.4% increase in the cost of providing health benefits next year based on early responses from an annual survey done by Mercer, a benefits consulting company.
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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 coverage.
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A growing crisis in the availability of drugs for chemotherapy, infections and other serious ailments is endangering patients and forcing hospitals to buy from secondary suppliers at huge markups because they can’t get the medications any other way.
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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 coverage.
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Renee Owen, 42, of Willard arrived at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds just before noon Thursday with an aching mouth and an umbrella to guard against the late morning drizzle. She and her younger sister, April Thompson, 35, waited outside for about 17 hours in the parking lot. About 940 people joined them as the night wore on, all hoping for free dental care.
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A conservative-leaning panel of federal appellate judges raised concerns about President Obama’s health care overhaul Friday, but suggested the challenge to it may be premature.
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President Barack Obama’s health care law got a mixed reception in its fourth review by a federal appeals court as three judges grappled with questions about the law’s constitutionality and their own authority to rule on it.
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A growing number of people are aware they may face steep nursing home and other long-term care costs as they age, but few are willing to purchase long-term care insurance, according to a new survey of California residents.
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Minneapolis startup Bloom Health is working on creating a national health insurance exchange, and the sale of a majority stake to insurers Wellpoint Inc., Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Health Care Service Corporation will help pave the way, the company announced Tuesday.
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Young adults, long the group most likely to be uninsured, are gaining health coverage faster than expected since the 2010 health law began allowing parents to cover them as dependents on family policies.
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Companies expect to pay 5.4% more on average for health benefits next year, the smallest increase in more than a decade, a survey says. Workers, however, may see their share of the costs outpace their earnings growth.
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With the economy sputtering, the number of young adults covered by health insurance grew by about a million as families flocked to take advantage of a new benefit in the law.
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Sarah Gardner wants her company’s employees to be savvy medical shoppers. So this year, she rolled out a plan that sets limits on how much the company will pay toward a range of tests and procedures, from MRIs to hysterectomies.
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Federal health investigators are knocking on doors across St. Louis County, but it’s nothing to be alarmed about. The county was picked to participate in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a long-term project of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Sarah Gardner wants her company’s employees to be savvy medical shoppers.
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President Obama and some members of Congress assert that, in cutting Medicare and Medicaid, they can whack health care providers while protecting beneficiaries. But experts say it is not so simple.
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Major health insurers are pooling more than $1 trillion in claims data and creating an institute to cull the statistics and identify the drivers of higher health spending.
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While Medicare and Medicaid would be spared radical reengineering, the plan spreads plenty of pain. Future retirees would be on the hook for a greater share of their Medicare costs.
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The Obama administration Tuesday announced $109 million in grants to states to help them beef up oversight of health insurers, a key goal of the healthcare law the president signed last year.
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The U.S. is offering $600,000 to states that make it harder for health insurers to raise premiums, federal regulators said.
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States are facing three options in building the exchanges, a key aspect of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul passed last year: run one themselves, do it in a partnership with the federal government or let the Health and Human Services Department take over entirely.
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Prevention has never been the cornerstone of American medicine. In this country, we tend to go to the doctor only when something is wrong, a habit long bemoaned by researchers and medical groups. The federal government aims to change that, and soon.
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People often fail to ask their doctors questions that could lead to fewer medical errors and better outcomes—and doctors don’t routinely encourage them to do so. That’s despite years of efforts to improve doctor-patient communication.
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Several major health insurers have agreed to provide their claims data on a regular basis to academic researchers, in an unusual agreement that they say will open a window onto the rising costs of health care.
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WellPoint Inc., the largest insurer by enrollment, is buying a private health-insurance exchange to compete for employers with the U.S. state-run marketplaces set to open in 2014 under President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul.
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President Obama’s budget director said Monday that the president’s new deficit-reduction plan would impose “a lot of pain,” and that is clearly true of White House proposals to cut $320 billion from projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid in the coming decade.
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Insurance officials in Missouri and Kansas, insurance industry leaders and consumer advocates are stepping resolutely to comply with the law of the land, but they’re walking a rocky path.
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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 the White House released.
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For the nation’s smallest businesses, parts of the health care law already are in effect, and more provisions will kick in when state health insurance exchanges are due to open for enrollment in two years.

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MedZou is a free clinic put on by University of Missouri Medical students for those without health insurance. Student Director Alex Sable-Smith says the majority of patients come in with chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.
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For some individuals, the state health insurance exchanges envisioned by the Affordable Care Act will provide income-based government help to purchase health care coverage.
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The exchanges, which open in 2014, are a key component of the health law, allowing individuals and small businesses to shop for coverage from a range of insurers, see if they qualify for low-income subsidies to help them buy policies – or enroll in Medicaid if they meet income requirements. The federal government will run exchanges for states that can’t – or won’t – do it themselves.
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Emergency medicine carries a deep aura of romance in America, with its first-responder traditions of adrenaline, acuity and bravery. But here in this rural mountain area of the West, and in a handful of other places around the nation, a new vision is gaining ground — that emergency workers should not wait around for crises to happen, but rather go out and prevent them.
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Although the health care reform law passed last year includes an individual mandate that people purchase insurance, there is no mandate that small businesses provide health insurance coverage to their employees.
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Worried that the federal government could end up running new insurance marketplaces for dozens of states, the Obama administration is making a new pitch Monday for cooperation to 46 states and the District of Columbia.
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As Washington looks to squeeze savings from once-sacrosanct entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, another big social welfare system is growing as rapidly, but with far less scrutiny: the health and pension benefits of military retirees.
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Beginning this month, health insurance companies will face more pressure to keep premiums reasonable. Previously, Missouri and Montana were the only states in the country where insurance rates weren’t examined or reported, but a provision of the federal health care reform law changes that.
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The Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has spoken to a Missouri audience about the importance of health literacy, or the concept of understanding one’s medical condition and related issues well enough to make good health decisions.
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With the oldest baby boomers turning 65 this year, the population will continue to get older faster -- and the need for primary health care will increase greatly.
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State governors and legislators opposed to the federal health care law are eyeing a novel approach to escape its provisions: joining an "interstate compact" that would replace federal programs — including Medicare and Medicaid — with block grants to the states.
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Millions of deaths from chronic illness and up to one-third of those from heart disease, the world’s leading killer, could be avoided or postponed if developing nations increased their health budgets by about 4 percent to put basic prevention measures in place.
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More than 900 dental professionals and lay people are gearing up for Missouri Mission of Mercy, a two-day event that will provide free dental care to as many as 2,000 people in need.
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State governors and legislators opposed to the federal health-care law are eyeing a novel approach to escape its provisions: joining an “interstate compact” that would replace federal programs — including Medicare and Medicaid — with block grants to the states.
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About 9,300 homebound patients are still waiting for Medicaid services in the wake of the firing of embattled state contractor SynCare, state officials told lawmakers on Thursday.

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The director of the state Department of Health and Senior Services said Thursday that temporary workers were being hired to evaluate the needs of thousands of Missouri Medicaid patients after a contractor hired to do the work dropped out.
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The Missouri Senate took the first steps toward implementing a key provision of the federal healthcare reform law on Thursday, taking public testimony regarding the creation of a state-administered insurance exchange program.
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Plans to accept a $21 million federal grant to develop the workings of a health insurance exchange in Missouri were put on hold Thursday after a group of Republican lawmakers decried the move as an attempt to usurp their authority.
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State flexibility takes center stage in proposed federal rules governing marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can shop for health insurance starting in 2014.
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Health plans don’t have the information they need to carry out some important health reform changes – and they don’t have enough time to get the work done either, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association says. The problem, according to the BCBSA, has to do with regulations that the Obama administration has been churning out detailing the specifics of the 2010 health care law.
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Missouri was awarded a $21 million federal grant last month to prepare for a state-run "health insurance exchange," which would allow people to shop for insurance policies through an online marketplace. Under the new federal health care law, states have until 2014 to either set up their own insurance exchanges or have their online marketplace run for them by the federal government.
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After several Republican senators raised concerns, Missouri insurance officials backed off plans yesterday to start spending millions of federal dollars on the computer technology needed to implement part of the federal health care law backed by President Barack Obama.
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Some of the nation’s largest insurers are complaining that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to ease health law requirements that they say threaten their ability to sell health coverage for millions of Americans who work abroad.

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For months, government officials, health industry professionals, policy experts and politicians have been debating what "essential benefits" should be covered by health plans beginning in 2014 that participate in state insurance exchanges and in Medicaid programs.
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In the latest advance for health care accountability, the country’s leading hospital accreditation board, the Joint Commission, released a list on Tuesday of 405 medical centers that have been the most diligent in following protocols to treat conditions like heart attack and pneumonia.
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A new report adds fresh details to the conventional wisdom that a new long-term care insurance program is fiscally out of whack — but there’s also widespread agreement among experts that there are lots of ways to try to fix it.
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The nearly 12 million senior citizens enrolled in private Medicare health plans will see their monthly premiums drop by an average of 4 percent while benefits remain stable next year, the Obama administration officials announced Thursday. In addition, they said, premiums fell by an average of 7 percent this year, much higher than the 1 percent the government projected a year ago.
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State insurance commissioners are preparing some stern words of advice for members of Congress trying to reduce the federal deficit: don’t touch Medicare supplemental insurance.
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Medicare Advantage premiums fell while enrollment rose this year, despite predictions from opponents of last year’s federal health care law that it would drive down enrollment and force up premiums.
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President Obama’s health care reform bill is filled with experiments on how to hold down health care costs. There will be bundled payments for episodes of care and extra payments for raising quality standards. It calls for the reorganization of hospitals and physician practices into “accountable care organizations,” which will share in savings if their costs fall below previous levels.
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The Obama administration said Thursday that premiums for popular Medicare Advantage insurance plans will drop for 2012, while enrollment is expected to rise.
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Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators.
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During the health care debate, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Geisinger Health System and Intermountain Healthcare were repeatedly touted as models for a new health care delivery system. Now, they have something else in common: All four have declined to apply for the “Pioneer” program tailor-made by the Obama administration to reward such organizations.
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Giving a boost to the new healthcare law, a coalition of hospitals, insurers, drug makers and consumer advocates is joining a multimillion-dollar campaign to get Americans signed up for health insurance starting in 2014.
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What’s killing us? For decades, global health leaders have focused on diseases that can spread _ AIDS, tuberculosis, new flu bugs. They pushed for vaccines, better treatments and other ways to control germs that were only a plane ride away from seeding outbreaks anywhere in the world.
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A congressional panel negotiating U.S. spending cuts should raise the age when people become eligible for Medicare to 67 from 65, a group representing health care chief executives said today.
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Preliminary data for the 2010 census is in. Nationwide, the rate of people without insurance remained steady compared to 2009, hovering around 16 percent. The actual number of Americans without insurance in 2010 reached nearly 50 million, up from 49 million in 2009.
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Betting that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul withstands lawsuits and a Republican repeal drive, an unusual alliance of industry, health care and consumer groups is laying the groundwork to sign up uninsured Americans.
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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with several key initial partners, today launched Million Hearts, an initiative that aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years.
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Nearly one million more Americans were without health insurance in 2010, compared with the year before. That’s according to new Census numbers released Tuesday, which also show the Midwest has one of the lowest rates of uninsured in the nation. But even for people who have health insurance, understanding a doctor’s orders can be an obstacle to getting good care.
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Median household income in Missouri declined last year. But the number of uninsured residents dropped slightly, as did the rate of poverty. This mixed report came from the latest U.S. Census data.
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In the early days of Howard Koh’s more than 30-year medical career, he advised cancer patients coming to him for a second opinion on the current stage of their cancer, prognosis for recovery and treatment options — “and not much else.”
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The requirement in the national health-care overhaul law that individuals buy health insurance is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday in a question that the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to settle.
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The number of people lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high after revisions were made to 2009 figures. Losses were due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy. Main provisions of the health overhaul don’t take effect until 2014.
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Nearly 50 million Americans lacking health insurance was the best economic news to come out of the bleak U.S. Census figures released today.
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Studies show that training family medicine residents in community health centers increases physician recruitment and retention in underserved areas, but such partnerships face financial challenges.
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Every year like clockwork, Anna Peterson has a mammogram. Peterson, who will turn 80 next year, undergoes screening colonoscopies at three- or five-year intervals as recommended by her doctor, although she has never had cancerous polyps that would warrant such frequent testing.
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Groups in at least 20 states are now scrambling ahead of an Oct. 17 deadline to apply for the first round of $3.8 billion in funding to start Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, called CO-OPs.

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When the St. Louis Regional Health Commission was set up a decade ago, one of its priorities was to find ways to pump life into the area’s imploding medical care system for the needy. Fragmented and underfunded, that system had just lost its last public hospital and had no effective way of delivering basic care to tens of thousands of vulnerable residents in St. Louis and St. Louis County.
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Last year about one in four adults under 65 reported having medical debt, an all-time high for the country. That’s because health care costs continue to rise at the same time people are losing their jobs and health coverage.
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The new statistics underscore how hard it may be for hospitals to stop patients from rebounding back through their doors, a major goal of Medicare as it seeks to curtail the nation’s ballooning health costs.
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As her mother’s Alzheimer’s worsened over eight long years, so did Doreen Alfaro’s bills: The walker, then the wheelchair, then the hospital bed, then the diapers - and the caregivers hired for more and more hours a day so Alfaro could go to work and her elderly father could get some rest.
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The Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated health care system in the country, has long employed many of the approaches Medicare is pushing on all hospitals to reduce unnecessary readmissions. But new data show VA hospital patients are just as likely to end up back in a hospital bed as are patients at private hospitals.
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Amanda Hite says she felt "really healthy" when she applied recently for health insurance. But Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield denied her, because she had seen a chiropractor a few months earlier for a sore back and later had visited an emergency room because of back pain.
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IBM’s supercomputer system, best known for trouncing the world’s best "Jeopardy!" players on TV, is being tapped by one of the nation’s largest health insurers to help diagnose medical problems and authorize treatments.
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Across the country, states are lagging in preparations to erect the health insurance market­places at the heart of the 2010 health-care overhaul, bogged down by a combination of partisan hostility and practical hurdles.
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Marilyn Bruno is ahead of the curve. She has planned ahead for the days she may need a nurse to give her injections, physical therapy or a caregiver to help her eat, dress and bathe. She is among 8 million Americans who have a long-term-care insurance policy.
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Amanda Hite says she felt "really healthy" when she applied recently for health insurance. But Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield denied her, because she had seen a chiropractor a few months earlier for a sore back and later had visited an emergency room because of back pain.
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A federal appellate court in Richmond, Va., on Thursday threw out a pair of cases challenging the constitutionality of President Obama’s 2010 health care law, ruling for varying reasons that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue.
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The Department of Health and Senior Services has hired 13 new workers on an emergency basis and will need 120 more to take over the job of determining the home care needs of Medicaid patients, Director Margaret Donnelly told a legislative committee yesterday.
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A Greene County legislator questioned Thursday whether the state can handle the backlog of Missouri Medicaid patients waiting for answers about in-home care.
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Want to know where your doctors earned their degrees? Or how about which physicians are — or aren’t — certified by specialty boards for a medical expertise?
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Kansas City is getting a closer look at how well area physician practices are treating ailments ranging from asthma to diabetes. And as KCUR’s Elana Gordon reports, the new analysis by a regional health coalition finds that care for several conditions is improving in the region.

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Health systems haven’t figured out how best to structure financial incentives to encourage primary care doctors to do their jobs better, suggests a new paper.
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In a surprise move, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court based in Virginia has tossed out one of the most prominent challenges to the health reform law.
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A typical American family saw its income grow by $23,000 between 1999 and 2009, but the rising cost of health care gobbled up so much of the increase that the family was left with just $95 a month in additional spending money after inflation, according to a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs.
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The changes have left nearly half the working-age population without enough protection from illness. Altogether, 44% of American adults were either uninsured or underinsured last year, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
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Doctors are paid higher fees in the United States than in several other countries, and this is a major factor in the nation’s higher overall cost of health care, says a new study by two Columbia University professors, one of whom is now a top health official in the Obama administration.
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Michelle Caudle, a mother of three and ovarian cancer patient who became a reluctant symbol of the nation’s fight over health care reform when her husband joined the Army to get coverage for her, died Friday. She was 42.
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Growing numbers of U.S. hospitals, responding to patient demand, are integrating acupuncture, massage therapy and other alternative services into their conventional medical care, a new national survey shows.
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Federal investigators announced Wednesday they charged 91 people in eight cities with attempting to bilk Medicare out of $295 million in what Attorney General Eric Holder called the biggest takedown in Medicare task force history.
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The Republican presidential candidates have been pushing for a state-based approach to health reform — but a Senate proposal to allow that to happen through the national health reform law has vanished from the congressional agenda.

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Fewer Medicare prescription drug plan enrollees are falling into a coverage gap known as the doughnut hole in which they bear the full cost of their prescriptions, according to a study from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
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If you have private, job-based health insurance and need follow-up care for an existing condition, you likely won’t face delays getting in to see a doctor. But no matter what kind of insurance coverage you have, if you have a new health problem or an emergency requiring a hospital or operating room, you may have to wait — dangerously long, in some cases — to be treated.
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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.
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A key component of children’s hospital ratings may be statistically unreliable, fueling concerns over popular rankings used by millions of Americans every year, according to a new study.
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What happens if the health law’s individual mandate -- the provision that requires almost all Americans to obtain health insurance or face a penalty -- is overturned by the Supreme Court?
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Throughout the rancorous public debate over the national health law, two provisions have maintained broad public support. One is the requirement that insurance companies let young adults up to age 26 remain on their parents’ policies. The other is a federally subsidized insurance plan for people whose medical conditions make them uninsurable in the private market.
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An Indiana-based company has lost its contract to screen Medicaid patients in Missouri for home-based care. Numerous complaints came to light last Wednesday during a House committee meeting about the services provided by SynCare LLC.
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One person who works with Missouri hospitals to prepare for disasters says one can never be completely ready to respond to an event on the scale of an EF5 tornado. Vice President Leslie Porth with the Missouri Hospital Association, however, offers nothing but praise for the staff at two Joplin hospitals who had to do just that.
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Many people might be loath to admit to money worries or to confront a trusted physician with a billing dispute. But as medical inflation continues to rise and patients are stuck with a higher share of total costs than they were in past decades, more doctors will be open to negotiating and helping them navigate billing problems, according to a report in the October issue of Consumer Reports.
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The transparency effort comes as states seek ever greater flexibility in how they manage their Medicaid programs to cope with historic budget woes. Federal regulators have expressed sympathy for states’ concerns, but they are also required to answer Congress’s calls for more public information about what states are up to.
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Researchers long ago established that certain medical procedures are performed at dramatically different rates from place to place, and that these disparities affect the quality and cost of health care.
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When Dillon Pefok agreed to coach a men’s soccer team in Washington, D.C.’s Soccer 4 Jesus church league, it wasn’t his intention to teach the players about the 2010 health law between drills.
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A select group of paramedics in several states is helping to provide primary health care by making house calls—an initiative encouraged by the federal health care law to address shortages in primary care and cut down on expensive visits to doctors and emergency rooms.
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A Washington state social worker is circulating a petition urging federal lawmakers and the military to adopt a policy declaring that service members shouldn’t be punished if they seek help for behavioral health issues, such as post-traumatic stress.
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Maribeth Chase didn’t know that the neurosurgeon who would be operating on her had been sued at least 16 times for allegedly making medical mistakes.

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A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn’t afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.
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Health insurers will have to start publicly justifying big rate hikes, according to a new requirement of the federal healthcare law that is meant to put pressure on insurance companies to hold down skyrocketing premiums.
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A new state law means Missourians will have access to more information about their doctors. The law allows the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts to release information about licensed physicians, in hopes of offering better transparency to patients.
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An Indiana company hired to assess the needs of thousands of Missouri Medicaid patients has quit after barely three months on the job following numerous complaints about its service and disagreements with state officials.
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Some big health insurance rate hikes will receive an extra layer of scrutiny starting Thursday, when a new review process begins as part of the health care overhaul.
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The much criticized contract with an Indiana firm to evaluate Medicaid patients who want home health care has ended.
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With a congressional supercommittee hunting for budget savings, the Pentagon’s Tricare health insurance program may be a target for reductions.
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Federal health reform is supposed to give nearly all Americans access to health insurance by 2014, but for many without employer-sponsored insurance, the options until then are getting more costly.
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Health insurance companies in Missouri are about to come under a lot more scrutiny for unexplained rate increases. Missouri is one of only two states in the country where rates aren’t examined or reported.
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Some drug makers are using an indirect method to delay competition from low-cost generic products by promising not to introduce their own generic versions if a potential competitor delays its entry into the market, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report on Wednesday.
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The process that landed SynCare LLC a $5.5 million state contract to assess Medicaid patients came under the microscope Wednesday as lawmakers grilled state officials overseeing what one legislator called a "derailed train."

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An Indiana company under fire for its handling of Missouri Medicaid patients is receiving help from the state in the form of a cadre of taxpayer-paid temporary workers and state employees, even as it faces the possibility of losing its lucrative state contract, lawmakers were told Wednesday.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced awards of more than $40 million in grants to improve public health infrastructure and workforce.
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One of the key consumer benefits of the federal stimulus package – subsidies to help laid-off workers continue their health care coverage – draws to a close Wednesday, raising concerns about how the unemployed will cover those expenses.
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Amid demands that SynCare be stripped of its state contract to assess Medicaid patients, the head of the Missouri health department reaffirmed on Tuesday her agency’s support for the vendor critics say has caused a meltdown in service delivery.

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The nation’s Republican governors, seeking a voice in Congress’ upcoming debt debate, pushed Tuesday for looser restrictions on how states spend money on health care for poor and disabled Americans.
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An analysis of three years of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that St. John’s is the best among Missouri hospitals in lowering readmission rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients.
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A provision of the 2010 federal health law seeking to increase Medicare beneficiaries’ share of health care costs is meeting resistance from an unlikely group of 33 state insurance regulators, health insurers and consumer advocates charged with revising Medigap insurance policies that cover most out-of-pocket expenses.
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A new federal and state program on health-insurance rates will determine whether bad publicity alone is enough to stop insurers from levying steep increases.
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About half of the uninsured Americans who stand to benefit the most from the health care reform law aren’t aware of how the legislation is designed to help them buy insurance, according to a new poll released Monday.
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New government statistics show federal health care fraud prosecutions in the first eight months of 2011 are on pace to rise 85% over last year due in large part to ramped-up enforcement efforts under the Obama administration.
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The federal health law calls for a huge expansion of the Medicaid program in 2014 - a potential bonanza for insurers if the law survives court challenges
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Many Mid-Missourians will see their out-of pocket health care costs increase if they’re covered by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and try to use one of the roughly 20 doctors who opted not to agree to a new contract with the health insurer.
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The risk of infections following surgery at St. Louis Children’s Hospital is far lower than the national average, but the rate among black children treated at the hospital is twice that of whites, according to a study by doctors at Washington University Medical School.
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One morning last month, when 12-year-old Ashley Sayadian woke with a nasty earache, her mom decided against waiting for an appointment and driving 7 miles to their busy pediatrician’s office. Instead, they visited their local drug store’s medical clinic.
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Sanjuanita Espinoza, 55, doesn’t seem like a gold mine for private insurers. She’s disabled, has high blood pressure and has no family to help with her care. Yet, to some Texas insurers, she is an opportunity. In August, the state picked five health plans in South Texas to oversee care for people such as Espinoza who are enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor.
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Even as states struggled to meet their Medicaid obligations during the recession, most increased the percentage of kids covered under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Thirty states boosted the proportion of eligible kids covered under the federal-state program and the national average moved from 80 percent to nearly 85 percent.
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Knowledge gaps, which exist everywhere - even in a community’s most stable neighborhoods - can be life-threatening if a woman is at risk of having a baby born too early or too small. Health professionals call this "health literacy." It’s the ability to obtain and understand accurate health information, to manage one’s behavior and to navigate the health care system.
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Barnes-Jewish Hospital continues to struggle with high numbers of Medicare patients who return soon after they’ve been discharged, new federal data show.
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Work crews are busy hammering, painting, pulling up carpet and laying vinyl flooring for a new emergency mental health unit inside of St. Louis Metropolitan Psychiatric Center.
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The Missouri Foundation for Health has named Robert Hughes as its next president and chief executive after a nationwide search.
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Nearly one of every 10 midsized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers after insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014 as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, according to a survey by a major benefits consultant.
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Katie Haverstick, 32, has spina bifida, a birth defect that has left her in a wheelchair and prone to bedsores. She can’t get out of bed or take a shower by herself.
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According to a new report released today, 9 million Americans who lost their jobs in 2008, 2009 and the first half of 2010 either couldn’t afford or couldn’t get replacement coverage. That pushed the number of uninsured Americans past 50 million.
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The Obama administration said Tuesday that states that have not adopted their own insurance exchanges may get a second chance to avoid getting one run solely by the federal government.

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St. John’s Health System saved Medicare $17.6 million over five years in a pilot program that looked at care for patients with chronic conditions and met project goals in the final year of the program for all of its benchmarks.
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The Obama administration said Tuesday that states that have not adopted their own insurance exchanges may get a second chance to avoid getting one run solely by the federal government.
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A federal appeals court will hear arguments this fall on a lawsuit by Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder challenging the new federal health care law.
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Efforts to reduce unnecessary ER visits by patients in Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled, are proliferating as states search for ways to control the soaring costs of the program. But state officials complain that their efforts are sometimes hampered by hospitals’ aggressive marketing of ERs to increase admissions and profits.
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Scores of California hospitals, under pressure to reduce infections that kill an estimated 12,000 patients every year, say they have managed to cut costs and save lives through an initiative that has nurses and doctors redoubling efforts to prevent deadly germs from taking root.
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To try to control spending, some employers are requiring patients to pay a percentage of the cost of specialty drugs — from 25 percent to 33 percent or more — rather than a flat dollar co-payment.
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Complaining of abdominal discomfort and chronic bronchitis, 22-year-old Toshia Johnson, an unemployed mother on Medicaid, went to a hospital emergency room in Bend, Ore., more than two dozen times in the year that ended in June 2010. She was never admitted to the hospital and used the ER for routine care because, she says, it’s near her home and the care was free.
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For Judy Ariba, one of the most harrowing moments in her battle against a rare form of leukemia occurred after she had already endured a long hospital stay and grueling chemotherapy: Her bill for a prescription cancer drug jumped from $10 to $1,700 a month.
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A Columbia physician who will no longer be part of the Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance network after Friday accused Anthem of “abusing” physicians, patients and employers by freezing reimbursements to physicians while doubling the cost of premiums for patients and employers.
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This week, we address readers’ questions about health insurance coverage and costs.
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Enrollment in employer-sponsored health insurance plans already is on the rise, and most companies surveyed by New York-based consulting firm Mercer say they will continue to cover workers and their families even after state-based health insurance exchanges launch in 2014.
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Bills floating through Congress would lift some restrictions on flexible spending accounts and allow employees to set aside pre-tax earnings to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses.
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Record shortages of prescription drugs in the United States are forcing pharmacists and doctors to scramble to find medications for their patients, suitable alternatives or to delay potentially lifesaving treatments.

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Clinics in Minnesota and nationwide are impatient for revisions of key regulations in the health care overhaul. Most major US clinics are balking at the rules proposed for Accountable Care Organizations.
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Large employers expect big increases in healthcare costs in 2012, and say they’ll pass more and more of those costs on to their workers. That’s the result of a new survey by the National Business Group on Health, a trade group for these large companies.
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Shopping for health insurance next year will be easier when hundreds of health insurers and employers use the same simple forms unveiled Wednesday by the Obama administration, consumer advocates and government officials say.
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The influential Institute of Medicine, an independent agency based in Washington, was given the task of recommending how to determine the basic health benefits for millions of Americans who will qualify for coverage sold through state-run insurance exchanges beginning in 2014.

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What would your health insurance cover if you got pregnant? How much could you expect to pay out of pocket if you needed treatment for diabetes? How do your plan’s benefits compare with another company’s?
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During a typical stay in a hospital, patients aren’t usually required to pay their share of the costs before treatment because the hospital isn’t always sure what the patients’ portion of the bill will be. But at least one area hospital is fine-tuning its billing system with the expectation that patients will pay upfront in the same way that some people are expected to pay before being treated in a doctor’s office.
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Consumers for the first time can get a peek at how national health reform will help people compare and choose among insurance plans.
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Proposed regulations released Wednesday would require health insurers to provide clear, concise and consistent cost information about individuals’ policies in easy-to-understand language.
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Health insurers will have to provide descriptive labels similar to those found on food products under a consumer-information provision in the 2010 health overhaul the U.S. began rolling out today.
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Obama administration officials proposed rules Wednesday for simple, standardized information forms health insurers and employers will be required to use beginning next year.
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A Missouri Senate committee tasked with drafting recommendations for a state health exchange held the first of at least three statewide hearings in Kansas City yesterday. Exchanges are new organizations under the federal health law, intended to provide a more organized and competitive marketplace for buying health insurance.
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Consumers shopping for health insurance will soon get a peek at a new standard form— akin to the nutrition label on food products— that will lay out the details of each policy, from deductibles to how much it might cost to have a baby.
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How should Missouri handle health care reform? A senate committee is traveling the state and was in Kansas City on Tuesday to hear testimony on the case. They’re trying to decide if and how they should establish a health exchange in Missouri.
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A quirk in the Affordable Care Act is that while it gives HHS the authority to create a federal exchange for states that don’t set up their own, it doesn’t actually provide any funding to do so.


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Medicaid gets much deeper discounts on many prescription drugs than Medicare, in part because Medicaid discounts are set by law whereas Medicare prices are negotiated by private insurers and drug companies, federal investigators said Monday in a new report.
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When Judith Nakamura tried to see a surgeon to follow up on her treatment for breast cancer recently, she was told it would be a two-month wait. Colleen Sullivan-Moore stepped in and got Ms. Nakamura an appointment the following week. Ms. Sullivan-Moore, at Presbyterian Healthcare Services in Albuquerque, N.M., heads a team of nurse navigators. Their job: to help steer cancer patients through the medical-system maze.
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Ray is executive director of Health Management Inc., which employs about 410 people, including 395 home health aides. With business booming, she is constantly looking to hire more, and she holds group interviews once or twice a month. “There’s a huge demand, and it’s only going to get larger as the years go by,” Ray said. With the nation’s aging population, she added, many people “will tell you that they are more comfortable in their home.”
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Nobody familiar with American medical care in the 21st century should be surprised that a 73-year-old woman can be minutes away from getting a painful collapsed vertebra filled with liquid plastic and it’s impossible to say whether the procedure works, or how.
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A divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Congress overstepped its authority when lawmakers passed the so-called individual mandate, the first such decision by a federal appeals court.
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A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta handed the Obama administration its biggest defeat to date in the battle over the health-care overhaul passed last year, ruling the law’s mandate on Americans to carry health insurance was unconstitutional.
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The government on Friday laid out incentives for states and people to participate in health insurance exchanges, including tax credits and funding grants for the states.
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The Obama administration has awarded more than $185 million in grants to 13 states and the District of Columbia to help establish new state-based health insurance marketplaces where consumers can shop for insurance starting in 2014, a key benefit of the new health care law.
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Missouri has received a nearly $21 million federal grant to build an online health insurance exchange. Travis Ford, with the Missouri Department of Insurance, says if set up correctly, an exchange would enable Missourians to view multiple insurance plans online, to more easily compare policies and prices.
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On July 1, a Washington health advocacy group issued a dire warning about a small but significant Medicare provision on the table in the debt talks.
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Native Americans aren’t getting the health care they need because services for them are vastly underfunded, the director of the federal Indian Health Service said Friday.
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Missouri has received almost $21 million from the federal government to help build an online exchange through which the uninsured could buy health coverage.
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Three years before Medicaid is due to cover millions of uninsured Americans, state funding cuts may be undermining how much care the government-run health insurance program for the poor will offer new enrollees.
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By 2014, the health insurance market will be flooded with 30 million more Americans purchasing plans through "health insurance exchanges." Created by the reform law, these online marketplaces will make purchasing a health plan "more like buying plane tickets or a home appliance," according to Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
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For states, the federal agreement to raise the debt ceiling has inspired confusion and consternation in equal parts. State officials knew that cuts in federal aid were coming their way, but when the deal was struck August 1, they had little sense of how deep the reductions would be and which programs they’d cover.
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A state health insurance option for people with pre-existing health conditions has once again gotten cheaper. As KCUR’s Elana Gordon reports, Missouri’s high risk insurance pool is reducing premiums in an effort to boost enrollment.
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When Missouri set up a new high-risk health-insurance pool last year, officials projected that the program would serve about 3,000 people. In fact, fewer than 600 have signed up, with many others saying they cannot afford the premiums. That’s part of the reason state insurance officials have announced rate reductions averaging 23 percent for new and existing participants.
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Here’s a guide to how the panel’s deliberations could influence Medicare and Medicaid.
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Two of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health insurers said Tuesday that a new joint venture will provide an opportunity for Blues insurers nationwide to expand into Medicaid coverage just as states are seeking ways to save money in the program and the ranks of Medicaid enrollees is poised to grow.
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Sixty-seven community centers will share $28.8 million to help build health service delivery sites, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday. The health service delivery sites are expected to serve an additional 286,000 patients, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a release.
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The Department of Insurance says the high-risk insurance pool was created about a year ago with federal funds available for paying claims. Spokesman Travis Ford says over the past year, the department has had to figure out what rates should be, and as a result, the rates have dropped 23 percent.
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Increasing access to health insurance in Massachusetts increased the number of patients at hospitals and clinics that offer care to a large number of poor and uninsured, according to a study released Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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The deal that President Barack Obama and Congress struck this week to raise the nation’s debt ceiling calls for creating a 12-member commission made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats selected from the House of Representatives and the Senate that will recommend how to trim at least $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade.
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States with high numbers of federal workers or contractors, large military presences or generous Medicaid programs for the needy are among the most vulnerable from Standard & Poor’s recent downgrade of U.S. government debt.
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Used to treating the men who served in Vietnam or World War II, many of the VA’s practitioners are rusty on skills like performing pelvic exams on women and talking about birth control. Some are downright nervous over treating women.

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Slowing the rise in health care spending may hinge on finding ways to lower costs while improving the quality of care. Marshfield Clinic has shown that can be done on at least a small scale.
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Federal officials say a plan to cut nearly $4 billion in Medicare funding to nursing homes is just a correction to curb unanticipated overspending. Critics say it’s a wrongheaded move that could force staff cuts and lead some homes to close. And even some experts who say the cut is justified worry about its consequences for patients.
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For many consumers, the ultimate test for the embattled health-care law is simple: Will it push down insurance premiums - or at least slow their relentless rise?
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The doctor just said your child has diabetes. Your first thought: What can I read? What can I do to keep her healthy? Soon, patients of Jordan Valley Community Health Center will know where to turn. They’ll have easy access to all kinds of health information right inside the medical clinic.
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Even as health costs continue to rise, Medicare beneficiaries will see the average price of a Part D drug plan decline slightly next year, the Obama administration announced Thursday, offering some relief amid pressure to cut the federal health insurance program for the elderly.
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More than 120 hospitals given top marks by patients for providing excellent care also have a darker distinction: high death rates for heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, a USA TODAY analysis of new Medicare data has found.
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New federal numbers show patients suffering from heart failure were more likely to die if treated at several Springfield-area hospitals than were patients treated elsewhere in the state. However, the data - which looked at deaths in three categories after hospital treatment - shows area hospitals generally performed on par with national rates when compared in other areas, such as treatment for heart attacks and pneumonia.
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The average monthly premium for Medicare’s popular prescription program won’t go up next year. Many seniors may even see a dip in their costs, particularly if they shop around during open enrollment season this fall.
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The U.S. health insurance bureaucracy costs doctors some $27 billion extra per year compared with Canada’s single-payer system, researchers found.

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In an era when many patients are eager to look up their latest diagnosis on the Internet and talk to three specialists before committing to a medical procedure, this is not an unusual conversation. Patients want to be partners with their doctors in determining the course of their care. But for many conditions, there are no good guideposts.
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The costs of the government’s big health care programs are soaring again, expenses not tackled in the agreement President Obama signed into law Tuesday to raise the nation’s debt limit and cut federal spending.
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Washington policymakers demanded more savings from hospitals, doctors and other medical providers in the debt deal President Obama signed Tuesday, a move designed to protect seniors and others who rely on Medicare.
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The debt ceiling agreement could jeopardize millions of dollars, and perhaps billions, in initiatives from President Barack Obama’s health care reform law if the super committee can’t come up with required spending cuts.

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Bernadette Gronborg of Festus bemoans the fact that she is cannot get detailed explanations about increases in her health insurance. Aged 64 and retired, she’s a year short of qualifying for Medicare. In the meantime, she says, she pays $300 a month for a high deductible policy "that hardly covers anything, but it’s something." Like a growing number of Missourians, she’s pleading with state lawmakers to force insurers to bring more transparency to rate making.
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Cuts in health care, retirement and benefits for the military are all potential targets for cuts as the nation struggles to rein in spending, the top U.S. military officer told anxious troops on two warfronts.

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It seems like a simple idea: create new marketplaces called "exchanges" where consumers can comparison shop for health insurance, sort of like shopping online for a hotel room or airline ticket.
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The domestic spending cuts contemplated in the debt-ceiling deal are sure to compound the dire fiscal situation confronting the states, which already are reducing jobs and slashing once-untouchable programs to balance their budgets.
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As state officials begin to decipher Washington’s spending reduction deal, it’s clear that federal aid to states for certain programs will take a hit over the next decade. But it will be a while before they know exactly which programs and how big a hit.
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Medicare and Medicaid were spared from immediate cuts in the debt deal, but it looks like just a temporary reprieve. Advocates for seniors and lobbyists for the health care industry are worried that Round Two of the budget battle, beginning this fall, could lead to cuts that raise costs for beneficiaries and squeeze providers such as hospitals, doctors, insurers and drug companies.
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The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual "well-woman" physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services.
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Physicians, home health practitioners and other providers could see an additional 2 percent pay cut on top of double-digit Medicare reductions already slated for 2012 under the debt ceiling deal reached by the White House and congressional leaders late Sunday.
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Showing that no battle is too small when it comes to health care reform, patient advocates are worried about the insurance industry influencing governance boards overseeing the health exchanges. That’s because the governance boards could be tapped to handle a lot of the heavy lifting on key policy questions, such as which health plans can sell on the exchanges and how to finance the online insurance marketplace and prevent conflicts of interest.
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As part of a comprehensive women’s health policy, the federal government will begin requiring insurance companies to cover birth control with no copay.
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Marking a new milestone in long-running efforts to make health insurance more equitable for women, the Obama administration announced Monday that tens of millions of women will soon be able to get birth control, breast pumps, HIV tests and five other categories of preventive services without co-pays or other out-of-pocket insurance charges.
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The growing number of hospital-based physicians in the U.S. could be taxing Medicare resources, government-funded researchers suggest in a new report.
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A half-century after the advent of the pill, the Obama administration on Monday ushered in a change in women’s health care potentially as transformative: coverage of birth control as prevention, with no copays. Services ranging from breast pumps for new mothers to counseling on domestic violence were also included in the broad expansion of women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
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Critics and supporters of the health reform law have one thing in common: Neither group knows what the most wide-reaching changes of the law look like in the real world. Those changes — to the insurance market, to patient care and to control of Medicare costs — simply don’t exist yet.
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A Kansas college hopes young doctors will be more willing to practice in small towns if they go to a medical school in a rural area.
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The cost of the compromise needed to raise the federal debt ceiling likely will inflict more fiscal pain on states still struggling to recover from the recession and the end of federal stimulus spending.
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Missouri officials say there should not be immediate problems for state government if Congress and the White House cannot reach an agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling before an impending deadline this week.
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As gridlocked Washington edges toward default, states staggering out of the last recession are preparing for the worst: The federal piggy-bank that helps them pay for health care, jobless benefits, road building and schools could run out of cash.

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When hospitals discharge patients, they typically see their job as done. But soon they could be on the hook for what happens after Medicare patients leave the premises, and particularly if they are re-admitted within a month.
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A new report finds that rural Missouri is on track to face greater health care challenges compared to its urban counterpart.
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Hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and state health programs could survive a brief pinch if the Washington debt ceiling deadlock leads the government to stop paying Medicare and Medicaid bills.
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Residents in rural Missouri tend to have access to fewer doctors than their counterparts in cities, and that could create problems as the new federal health care law is implemented, the Missouri Hospital Association said yesterday.
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President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner failed to strike a "grand bargain" on the nation’s deficit, but they may have pulled off another trick: revolutionizing the debate over Medicare.
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In a rare bit of good news for the Obama administration and budget policymakers, health care costs increased last year at their slowest pace since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid 1960s.
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Though the withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will save the nation billions of dollars a year, another cost of war is projected to continue rising for decades to come: caring for the veterans.
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The federal health law, which will expand coverage to 30 million currently uninsured Americans, will have little effect on the nation’s rising health spending in the next decade, a government report said today.
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The nation’s health care tab is on track to hit $4.6 trillion in 2020, accounting for about $1 of every $5 in the economy, government number crunchers estimate in a report out Thursday.
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The Supreme Court was asked on Wednesday to hear a challenge to the health care overhaul law, raising the possibility that the justices could rule on the matter by next summer, just months before the presidential election. Similar requests are likely to follow, and it is not clear which if any of them the court will agree to hear.
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Up to 20 percent of ER visits could be diverted to less-expensive retail health care sites if patients learned about their choices. To make that happen, insurers are stepping up their efforts — using everything from financial incentives to Internet ads — to encourage patients to take advantage of less-costly alternatives.
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If Democrats and Republicans in Washington ever come together on a deal to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget, it almost certainly would require changes to Medicaid, the state-run health care program for the poor that consumes about 8 percent of the federal budget.
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The U.S. government’s stalemate over raising the debt limit is taking a growing toll on states as Tuesday’s deadline draws near, with some canceling bond sales and identifying roadwork and other expenditures that could be delayed.
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A U.S. health official overseeing the new insurance exchanges program said he expects recently released regulatory guidelines to spur activity in the states this summer.
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Consumers may catch a little break when their health insurance policies renew. Lower-than-expected use of health care has helped push insurer earnings higher and that may temper how much they increase premiums.
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Rural Americans are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart problems and cancer, and face greater difficulty accessing quality health care than urban counterparts, according to a report released on Wednesday.
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A deal that President Barack Obama and Republicans had been working on for weeks to raise the federal debt ceiling — and cut federal Medicaid spending — could have a profound impact on state budgets in Colorado and across the country.
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A new study suggests that Medicare’s 5-year-old prescription drug plan is keeping seniors out of hospitals and nursing homes, saving the federal program an estimated $12 billion a year in those costs.
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The Obama administration will soon take over the review of health insurance rates in 10 states where it says state officials do not adequately regulate premiums for insurance sold to individuals or small businesses.
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