All posts tagged "Costandquality"

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Lucille Brooks was stunned when she picked up the phone before Christmas two years ago and learned a nursing home was suing her. “I thought this was crazy,” recalled Brooks, 74, a retiree who lives with her husband in a modest home in the Rochester suburbs. Brooks’ brother had been a resident of the nursing home. But she had no control over his money or authority to make decisions for him. She wondered how she could be on the hook for his nearly $8,000 bill. Brooks would learn she wasn’t alone. Pursuing unpaid bills, nursing homes across this industrial city have been routine......

Thousands of military veterans who are sick after being exposed to toxic smoke and dust while on duty are facing a Senate roadblock to ambitious legislation designed to provide them care. The Senate could start work as soon as this week on a bipartisan bill, called the Honoring Our PACT Act, that passed the House of Representatives in March. It would make it much easier for veterans to get health care and benefits from the Veterans Health Administration if they get sick because of the air they breathed around massive, open-air incineration pits. The military used those pits in war zones around......

A congressional effort to fix the nation’s deteriorating mail service may come at the expense of an even bigger and more complicated problem: Medicare solvency. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 would help shore up post office finances by ending the unusual and onerous legal requirement to fund 75 years of retirement health benefits in advance. In return, it would require future Postal Service retirees to enroll in Medicare. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the move could save the postal retirement and health programs about $5.6 billion through 2031 while adding $5.5 billion i......

Americans keep hearing that it is important to test frequently for covid-19 at home. But just try to find an “at-home” rapid covid test in a store and at a price that makes frequent tests affordable. Testing, as well as mask-wearing, is an important measure if the country ever hopes to beat covid, restore normal routines and get the economy running efficiently. To get Americans cheaper tests, the federal government now plans to have insurance companies pay for them. The Biden administration announced Jan. 10 that every person with private insurance can get full coverage for eight rapid tests a......

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. Click here for a transcript of the episode. This episode kicks off with a wild ride: How one journalist nearly got roped into a scam. While hunting for a new health insurance plan, award-winning journalist Mitra Kaboli got an offer that seemed too good to be true — and seemed to be coming from her current insurer. She was skeptical and, it turns out, had every reason to be. Dania Palanker of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms unpacks this sketchy scheme and gives us the key to avoiding it: When you’re searching for healt......

The Food and Drug Administration’s approval in June of a drug purporting to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease was widely celebrated, but it also touched off alarms. There were worries in the scientific community about the drug’s mixed results in studies — the FDA’s own expert advisory panel was nearly unanimous in opposing its approval. And the annual $56,000 price tag of the infusion drug, Aduhelm, was decried for potentially adding costs in the tens of billions of dollars to Medicare and Medicaid. But lost in this discussion is the underlying problem with using the FDA’s “accelerat......