Latest News On CMS

Latest California Healthline Stories

Website Errors Raise Calls For Medicare To Be Flexible With Seniors’ Enrollment

Members of Congress and others complain Medicare’s revamped Plan Finder had problems. Federal officials say they can help consumers who got bad information change their plans next year. But details about how switching will work are yet to come.

KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: We Spend HOW MUCH On Health Care?

The annual accounting of national health spending is out. And the 2018 health bill for the U.S. was $3.6 trillion, consuming nearly a fifth of the nation’s economy. Meanwhile, Congress is nearing the end of the year without having finished either its annual spending bills or several other high-priority health items. Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner, Joanne Kenen of Politico and Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews KHN’s Markian Hawryluk about the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month.”

White House Unveils Finalized Health Care Price Transparency Rule

The final directive drew swift responses from the hospital and insurance industries. The Trump administration also released a proposed rule that would require health insurers to spell out for all services beforehand just how much patients may owe for their out-of-pocket costs.

Startup Seeks To Hold Doctors, Hospitals Accountable On Patient Record Requests

Despite laws requiring that health care providers hand over copies of patient records in a timely fashion, many people have trouble getting theirs. Ciitizen, a Palo Alto, Calif., company that helps cancer patients with the task, recently published a scorecard that rates hospitals, doctors and clinics on their compliance with records requests.

Record Number Of Legionnaires’ Cases In 2018 Risk Lives, Cause Cleanup Headaches

Legionnaires’ disease cases hit an all-time high in 2018, with eight times more cases than 20 years ago. Even though many facilities in Missouri and elsewhere have water management plans in place to deal with the potentially deadly disease, they are still finding the underlying bacteria that causes it in their water.