"Narrowing of networks" was an abstract concept to me until Blue Shield narrowed my own network of healthcare providers, most of whom I have been seeing for 18 years.
Health Insurance and Costs
As a federal "funding bump" expires, the payments California doctors receive for seeing Medicaid patients are dramatically decreasing. At the same time, the state is imposing a 10 percent fee cut that was approved in 2011 but is just now taking effect.
In New Jersey, an estimated 11,000 Medicaid applicants are still trapped in a tangle of digital red tape and a bureaucratic maze. Some families have been in limbo for nearly a year. The state has yet to announce any permanent solution.
A strongly reported series examining a new program targeting 'super-utilizers' in Pennsylvania debunks a number of myths about the system's sickest and most vulnerable patients. Timothy Darragh tells the story behind the story and the lessons he learned along the way.
Contributing editor William Heisel shares a few of his favorite health stories from the past year in the first of two posts.
The ACA expanded insurance coverage, but many children throughout the country are still not receiving important health care benefits. The extent of the coverage exclusions varies widely depending upon which state a child calls home.
As the pool of uninsured shrinks, public hospital systems must increasingly compete for newly insured patients. “We're forcing public hospitals to compete in one of the most competitive industries that has ever existed in the economy,” said one county health director.
After months of reporting on immigrants' experiences in enrolling for health coverage, reporter Momo Chang still didn't have the long cover story she'd envisioned. But she stayed flexible and ended up with a compact news story that focused on a single facet of immigrant enrollment.
Millions of Californians still don't have health insurance. Undocumented people don't qualify for Obamacare benefits, and many others still find coverage too expensive. Leaburn Alexander, a 53-year-old night janitor at a hotel near San Francisco International Airport, is among the latter.
With millions of their patients newly insured because of health care reform, community health centers, once viewed as providers of last resort, are remaking themselves as providers of choice.