The race is in Iowa, whose Medicaid program has been plagued with controversy since 2016, when the state hired national insurance companies to manage billions of dollars' worth of benefits. With his executive order, Iowa joined most other states in privatizing the management of Medicaid, which covers healthcare for more than 67 million Americans with low…
According to online campaign finance reports, Blackburn's primary campaign received $15,400 each from PACs run by Franklin-based Acadia Healthcare and insurance provider Delta Dental. A PAC representing health insurance provider Blue Cross Blue Shield in Tennessee also contributed $15,400 toward her primary campaign. Blackburn has also seen…
Two former directors of the state agency that oversees Medicaid fraud investigations said Friday that Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird's newly formed fraud task force is "political theater." Dean Lerner and Kevin Techau, who served as directors of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals under Democratic governors Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver, said…
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. California is at the early stages of a full-blown healthcare crisis. Last year, President Donald Trump's regressive budget bill slashed $100 billion in healthcare funding from California to pay for more billionaire tax breaks.
Alice Thornton has spent more than two decades treating people living with HIV in Lexington, Kentucky. Her team tends to "cringe" anytime they hear about patients having to fill out lots of paperwork, like when applying for Social Security Disability payments, because it can be a difficult, burdensome process. Starting Jan. 1 in most of the country, some enrollees—…
Three Federal Reserve officials who dissented at this week's policy meeting in favor of an interest rate hike expressed concern Friday that without an immediate increase in shortterm borrowing costs inflation will stay stuck above the Fed' s 2% target, where it has been for more than five years. A fourth U.S. central banker said he also sees a strong case for…
When the No Surprises Act took effect in 2022, it was a rare feat of bipartisan problem-solving. The law was meant to prevent a once all-too-common scenario: An insured patient would seek emergency care, only to face financial disaster because one of the providers involved was outside the patient's insurance network. Imagine, for example, being rushed to the…
A whistleblower lawsuit accusing Norfolk- based Sentara Health of exploiting its monopoly to saddle Charlottesville with the nation's highest Affordable Care Act premiums was dismissed Friday as a federal judge ruled that courts cannot second- guess insurance rates approved by state regulators. It drew an all-star legal team led by Rick Mountcastle, the…
