health insurance news

Our editors review national news and opinion leaders and hand-select the most health insurance and health reform coverage.



Category: Medicare





July 14, 2011

10 Medicare bills you can expect to pay

Some are fairly obvious, but others are hidden amid bureaucratic small print. For instance, who knew that you pay extra when a doctor doesn’t “accept assignment” from Medicare? It’s up to the savvy consumer to be aware of all the ways medical costs can mount up even with a Medicare card in your pocket.



June 14, 2011

How much of long-term care will Medicare cover?

The good news is that while Medicare’s role in long-term care is complicated, you can head off much of the headache that comes with the financial burden of long-term care by understanding some basic concepts.



May 26, 2011

How Medicare made Grandpa a drug mule

How our investigative Medicare reporter/Guinea pig got caught up in the gritty world of prescription drug trafficking and why more than a million Americans look north to Canada for cheap drugs each year.



May 17, 2011

Is Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan finished?

No major Republic presidential candidates are endorsing it and Newt Gingrich slammed it on Sunday. Is Paul Ryan's Medicare voucher plan dead on arrival?



May 16, 2011

Pelosi’s says she’ll put Medicare on the table, but won’t euthanize it

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she'll put Medicare and other entitlement programs on the table in talks about reducing the deficit, but that "abolishing Medicare is not on the table."



May 9, 2011

dirty little secret: Medicare is already privatized

It’s a dirty little secret that’s right out in the open: The GOP has already privatized Medicare for more than one out of four recipients. They did it back in 2003 through the Medicare Modernization Act.



May 5, 2011

Cantor comes clean on Medicare, health reform

Cantor takes as a given that rationing of health care is our future, and he may be right. But he puts his reliance in the private sector to do that rationing rather than the government. We don’t agree. America’s private health delivery system has worked like crap for the under 65 crowd, and will be even worse in dealing with older people, who tend to need more of it.



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December 7, 2011

State returns federal grant, but work groups, study group continue to assess Oklahoma exchange issues

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 7, 2011. Oklahoma’s insurance exchange planning was handed to a joint legislative committee after lawmakers were unable to come up with a bill they could agree on. The two Republican legislators leading the study group said they would be starting from scratch to learn what Oklahomans want to see from an insurance exchange. [...]


December 7, 2011

State’s leadership would prefer to see ACA repealed

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 7, 2011. Serious reservations about the concept of a health insurance exchange from the governor, lieutenant governor and some citizens are putting the Ohio exchange in jeopardy. Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who also directs the state’s insurance department, complained that an exchange will be expensive and that Ohio’s top leadership would [...]


December 6, 2011

Governor Snyder urges passage of state insurance exchange legislation by Thanksgiving

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 6, 2011. Michigan is working toward the creation of a Michigan Health Marketplace. Though the legislature didn’t approve a law authorizing the exchange, Gov. Rick Snyder supports it and is encouraging legislators to get a bill in place by November 2011 so Michigan can apply for more federal grant funding. The [...]


December 6, 2011

Advisory committee, governor work through Maine exchange issues

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org This page last updated on December 6, 2011. Maine has made enough progress with its insurance exchange development that an exchange advisory committee and the governor are working through nitty-gritty issues such as whether the individual and small group markets should be separate, and what kind of governing authority the executive director [...]


December 6, 2011

Health reform critic Brownback returns $31.5 million, but steering committee continues to work on exchange

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 6, 2011. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is one of the most vociferous critics of health reform in the nation, and he has decided to give back $31.5 million in federal money that would have helped the state build its insurance exchange. The exchange has been a matter of debate [...]


December 6, 2011

Legislature fails to pass bill, but insurance department works to create exchange

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 6, 2011. Nebraska’s Department of Insurance is working on creating an insurance exchange after the legislature failed to approve a bill to do so. The Insurance Department is holding public hearings and is conducting analyses on the economic, financial and information technology issues related to a state-run exchange. An analyst for [...]


December 5, 2011

State will accept $7 million for development of exchange

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated on December 5, 2011. Iowa is inching its way toward an insurance exchange through the establishment of an insurance information exchange, which was approved in 2010. It provides consumers with comparisons of benefits, premiums and out-of-pocket costs of current health plans, but does not establish or sell any new plans as [...]


December 5, 2011

Governor opposes ACA, state mulls funding for exchange

Staff Writers healthinsurance.org Updated December 5, 2011. Idaho is moving ahead with planning a health insurance exchange, despite Republican Gov. Butch Otter’s discomfort with the health reform law as a whole. Otter in September 2011 allowed an application for federal grant money to get the exchange going. But he told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that it [...]


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