Search results for

In a switch, Medicare began covering smoking cessation counseling for smokers without symptoms of disease back in 2010. Beneficiaries are eligible for up to two four-session smoking cessation counseling attempts a year.

Under the federal health law, adult children can remain on parents' insurance plans until they reach age 26. Parents may find out about their daughters' prescriptions for birth control pills from notices of insurance benefits.

Medicare is withholding 1 percent of its regular hospital payments to fund bonuses for hospitals that score well on quality tests. Separately, Medicare will penalize hospitals that have higher than expected readmission rates.

More intense care can translate into worse, and more expensive, care at the end of life. So, the thinking goes, doctors who train at hospitals with better and more efficient care will be in better shape to become future leaders.

State insurance regulators learned recently that an electronic system most insurers will use to submit their policies for state and federal approvals won't be ready for testing next month. The unexpected problem could delay work on the exchanges by three months.

Urgent care clinics are part of a growth strategy for some hospital chains. But some analysts wonder if hospitals will be able to provide good customer service at the clinics.

Health premiums are going up for 2013, though not quite as much as in 2012. Even so, the tab will likely be bigger for most people who get health coverage at work. Employers are asking workers to shoulder a bigger portion of the costs.

Just before new penalties kicked in for hospitals that readmit too many Medicare patients, the government discovered that the data it used to were out of date. The changes from the error are tiny, amounting on average to a fraction of a percent for most of the affected hospitals.

Since the health law was enacted, 22 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or regulations that encouraged insurers to begin selling child-only policies again, a study found. But in many states there are no restrictions on how much insurers can charge for them.

Pressure on doctors and hospitals to reduce the rate of early elective deliveries appears to be working. A detailed look at hospitals across the country finds births before 39 weeks are on the decline.