News Articles

World Happiness Report Appendices & Data 2024  

Nearly half of health systems are considering dropping Medicare Advantage plans By Andrew Cass March 22, 2024   “Onerous” authorization requirements and high denial rates have health systems considering whether to drop Medicare Advantage plans, according to a report from the Healthcare Financial Management Association and Eliciting Insights.   “HFMA Health System CFO Pain Points

Mortality in the United States, 2022 By Kenneth D. Kochanek, M.A., Sherry L. Murphy, B.S., Jiaquan Xu, M.D., and Elizabeth Arias, Ph.D. March 2024   Key findings Data from the National Vital Statistics System Life expectancy for the U.S. population in 2022 was 77.5 years, an increase of 1.1 years from 2021. The age-adjusted death

Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget: 16 healthcare takeaways By Madeline Ashley, Kelly Gooch and Alexis Kayser March 11, 2024   President Joe Biden proposed a $7.3 trillion budget March 11, including various initiatives to lower healthcare costs and an $800 million investment in hospital cybersecurity protection.   16 healthcare takeaways:   1. Medicare. The proposed budget

BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR: How Medicare Advantage care denials affect patients By Matthew Cunningham-Cook March 4, 2024   In 2023, insurance behemoth UnitedHealth spent $8 billion buying back its stock to juice its stock price—and its executive compensation, which is tied to the company’s stock price. It spent 39% more on stock buybacks in

Indigenous Americans — The Journal’s Historical “Indian Problem” By David S. Jones, M.D., Ph.D., Moustafa Abdalla, M.D., D.Phil., and Joseph P. Gone, Ph.D. January 4, 2024   By the time the Journal was launched in 1812, Boston had witnessed two centuries of destructive confrontations between Europeans and Indigenous Americans. Although some Indigenous communities persisted in

Key Messages: Health Care at Risk for Millions By California Hospital Association 2024  

A Hospital’s Overflowing Emergency Room, Our Sick Health System By Mark Kreidler February 15, 2024   Last summer, officials at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles made a decision: If they didn’t start yelling for help, their facility was headed for a total shutdown.   In the abstract, the problem seemed

The Ethos of Emergency Medicine Hangs in the Balance by Monica Saxena, MD, JD, Dara Kass, MD, Esther Choo, MD, MPH, and Jennifer A. Newberry, MD, JD, MSc March 8, 2024   The ethos of emergency medicine — any patient, any time, any problem — could be radically changed, considering pending legal challenges that may

Letters to the Editor: If Canada can have single-payer healthcare, so can California Including Editorial from HC4US.org’s own James Sarantinos February 28, 2024   To the editor: Rivas is disingenuous in his claim that the state can’t afford a single-payer healthcare system in the face of spiraling budget deficits.   Such a system will generate