Author archive for lhigashi

By Amelia DonovanMarketplace silver plans offer limited access to HIV drugs, new analysis shows. It seems that consumers who purchase silver plans on the insurance marketplace receive very poor coverage of common drug plans they could end up needing as well as high out-of-pocket costs....Both the National Health Law Program…

By Kaiser Health NewsIn 31 states and the District of Columbia, silver-level plans cover fewer than seven of the 10 most common drug treatment options or charge consumers more than $200 a month in cost sharing, according to an analysis of 2015 silver plans by consultant group Avalere Health.In most…

By Virgil DicksonA new report to Congress on the transparency of Medicaid demonstration waivers is doing little to quell concerns that the CMS needs to beef up its oversight of the policy experiments...."The big picture here is that a state could change absolutely everything via an amendment and not…

Miscommunication due to language barriers is a growing health care issue, and technologies to aid interpretation are racing to keep upBy Adam HoffmanThe two-year-old Latina girl arrived at a Massachusetts emergency room in 1999 with intense shoulder pain. “Se pegó, se pegó,” her Spanish-speaking mother cried....“If you have someone…

By Jason ClayworthHundreds of pages were initially redacted or missing from bid documents made public last week in which private companies competing to run Iowa's $4.2 billion Medicaid program detailed their proposals and why they deserved the lucrative state contracts, a Des Moines Register investigation has found...."If companies are…

By Elizabeth TaylorWith more people becoming eligible for Medicaid, one question repeatedly comes up: "will receiving Medicaid coverage jeopardize my family home?" Depending on the circumstances, the answer can be complicated. But states can do much to make it less complex.The fact is that states can recover against the…