News Articles

How Corporate Health Insurers Harm America’s Seniors Physicians for a National Health Program May 23, 2024   Executive Summary   Medicare Advantage (MA), the privately-administered version of Traditional Medicare (TM), is causing significant harm to America’s patients, providers, and health care system. The insurers who run MA plans claim that they lead to better patient […]

What’s Driving Healthcare Consolidation? The Answer May Surprise You by Joyce Frieden, Washington Editor, MedPage Today May 21, 2024   WASHINGTON — What is driving consolidation in healthcare? The answer is: consolidation, Erin Fuse Brown, JD, MPH, said Tuesday.   “If all of the other competitors in the market are getting bigger, then in order

Urge Congress to keep the minimum staffing standard for nursing homes! May 31, 2024   Nursing home residents need your help! In the coming days, Congress will be considering legislation and a joint resolution that would prevent the implementation of the recently issued minimum staffing standard in nursing homes. This extreme legislation would not only

KFF’s Health Policy 101 Edited by Dr. Drew Altman May 28, 2024   Introduction   Dr. Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of KFF   I have long planned to create an online resource or mini “textbook” for faculty and students interested in health policy. One of the stumbling blocks is that there is

California deficit could halt raises for disability workers. They say Newsom ‘breaking a promise’ By Vanessa G. Sanchez, KFF Health News May 02, 2024   Families of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities say Gov. Gavin Newsom is reneging on a scheduled raise for the workers who care for their loved ones, and advocates warn

March 2024 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy Mar 15, 2024   Executive Summary   By law, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reports to the Congress each March on the Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) payment systems, the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, and the Medicare prescription drug program (Medicare Part D).   In this year’s report,

The Synergy of Clinical and Social Care in the US [PNHP] The Synergy of Clinical and Social Care in the US by Eric Reinhart, New England Journal of Medicine April 10, 2024   Clinicism is the reduction of health to individualistic biomedical paradigms that overemphasize clinical perspectives and interventions (even though clinical care is estimated

The US Medical Establishment Is Making One of Its Worst Mistakes—Again by Eric Reinhard and Mary T. Bassett May 21, 2024   The world’s most influential medical journal has finally confronted its failure to address an unfolding genocide—over 80 years after the fact. Last month, the historians Joelle Abi-Rached and Allan Brandt were invited to

Marshall Allen, a Tenacious Health Care Journalist, Dies at 52 by Michael Grabell May 21, 2024   Marshall Allen, a former ProPublica investigative reporter who relentlessly took on the U.S. health care system and fought for the rights of patients facing unfair medical bills, died Sunday at a hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He

Revisiting ‘Left Without Being Seen’ Metrics in the ED by Gregory Jasani, MD May 20, 2024   The “left without being seen” (LWBS) metric hangs around the neck of every emergency department (ED). Among the many numbers and metrics that impact our day-to-day work as emergency medicine physicians, few are as important or problematic as