Group items tagged

is uncertain financial situation is typical of the population most likely to consider the insurance marketplaces, said Ceci Connolly, managing director of the Health Research Institute at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Only about 51 percent will have full-time jobs, with a median annual income of about $21,700, according to an analysis by her firm based on government data like the census. She said 38 percent of the people expected to enroll will end up shuttling several times between Medicaid and the marketplaces over the next four years. <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

One-third of U.S. employers plan to move their workers’ health-care coverage to a private exchange in the next few years, a survey found, following the le

Health spending in the U.S. is expected to increase more than 6 percent this year and 6.2 percent annually from 2015-2022 as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes full effect and millions of Americans gain insurance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Under Obamacare, companies that don’t offer coverage for their employees will be fined $2,000 per employee. Employers spend $6,000 per employee on average, so d

Several hospital chains are driving the boom – including HCA Inc., which will open its seventh ER later this year in Florida, and Wake Med Health and Hospitals, which will add its fourth next month in the Raleigh, N.C., metro area. They regard the facilities as a way to expand into new markets, generate admissions to their hospital and reduce crowding at their hospital-based ERs.

reater Houston has 150 emergency rooms — twice the number as greater Miami -- even though its population is only slightly bigger, according to a KHN analysis.

While the ERs charge insurers double or triple the amount per patient as an urgent care center or doctor's office, patients use them for routine care that could be provided in less costly settings, Ho says. That is the case with standard ERs as well. Yet, insured patients have little incentive to drive past the more expensive, freestanding ERs because their co-payment is only $50 or $100, just modestly more than what it might cost for a visit to an urgent care center or doctor’s office. Their insurers pay the balance generally.

Medicare patients, however, are at a disadvantage because there is no cap for out-of-pocket expenses. They "are paying copayments or coinsurance forever," Dr. Newcomer explained.

"What we are already seeing is that patients who are on Medicare are coming to hospital settings; they are not being treated at their doctor's office or their infusion center because the doctors can't afford to do it," said Dr. Swain. The doctors would actually lose money on this, so the patients are coming to a higher-priced facility — a hospital — to get their infusion, she explained. "I think it is really going to have an effect, not on the patients but on the economy in general," she added.

The decline in Medicaid budgets has added challenges to medication access for recipients of this program.

It’s estimated that seventy per cent of a primary-care doctor’s practice now involves management of psychosocial issues ranging from marriage counselling to treatment of anxiety and depression.

Fewer medical students are going into psychiatry, partly because psychiatrists, like primary-care doctors, earn among the lowest salaries of all physicians. Those who do choose psychi