Health Insurance | featured news

Aetna will buy Coventry Health Care for $5.7 billion as the insurance industry realigns itself to better navigate the massive government health care overhaul....

As campaign debate over Medicare intensifies, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Obama have been accusing one another of threatening the future of the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough... Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law.

Insurers and government officials say a new regulation regarding health insurance rebates may be keeping premiums lower for everyone.

After years of shipping data-processing, accounting and other back-office work abroad, some healthcare companies are starting to shift clinical services and decision-making on medical care overseas, primarily to India and the Philippines. Some of the jobs being sent abroad include so-called pre-service nursing, where nurses at insurance firms, for example, help assess patient needs and determine treatment methods.

Republican politicians across the country claim that Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the widely popular program which makes health insurance available for lower-income Americans, will increase costs for states. Ten Republican governors have pledged not to accept the Medicaid expansion funds and 22 other governors are considering turning down the money.

Insurance companies hailed the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, saying it gives them certainty about the rules they'll face as they push to cut administrative costs and reward doctors who contain health care costs by emphasizing preventive care.

Stocks of hospital companies rose sharply and insurance companies fell Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld a requirement that almost all Americans carry health insurance. The stock of Hospital Corp. of America, the largest private hospital chain in the United States, rose a little more than 7 percent. Quest Diagnostics, which runs laboratories, rose almost 3 percent.

Under the healthcare law, insurance companies would be required to cover the panel's recommended weight-loss treatments. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the law this week. In a move that could significantly expand insurance coverage of weight-loss treatments, a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America.

Up to half of the people who are treated at hospital ERs and trauma centers are under the influence of alcohol.