Federal funding for state-run high-risk pools that provide health insurance to thousands of Americans is in jeopardy for fiscal 2007 unless lawmakers act before adjourning for the year, insurers said. Read more »
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael O. Leavitt acknowledged tension between employers and physicians over a recent plan for health transparency but said the health care industry is responding. Read more »
Filling in the Medicare drug benefit's "doughnut hole," lifting federal curbs on stem cell research, and reauthorizing a federal program that helps provide health coverage to children will all be priorities next year for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said. Read more »
Seventeen states will run out of federal dollars to fund their State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIPs) before the end of fiscal 2007 unless Congress intervenes, West Virginia Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller IV said. Congress must act during the current lame-duck session to wipe out the shortfalls totaling $920 million or else place 630,000 children at risk of losing their health insurance coverage, he said. Read more »
A commission charged with finding ways to overhaul Medicaid recommended a plan that would place the program's sickest enrollees in managed care plans, give states more power to shape benefit packages, and push individuals to take more responsibility for their own nursing home costs. Read more »
The Medicare overhaul law thus far hasn't saved states money even though it switched prescription drug coverage for some 6.2 million elderly and disabled Americans from the state–federal Medicaid program to the federal Medicare program, according to a survey. And the budget savings measure doesn't appear to be having much impact on spending by state Medicaid programs for prescription drug benefits either, said the survey, conducted for the National Association of State Medicaid Directors. Read more »