The first Medicaid redeterminations since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic have been underway in at least five states since the beginning of the month. Health advocacy groups are pressuring U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to ensure that a "health equity and civil rights disaster" does not...
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed a massive executive order aimed at senior care, long-term care facilities and home caregiving. The order also included provisions for child care and early childhood education.
The long-term care sector has struggled with workforce shortages that predate the COVID-19 pandemic but were exacerbated...
Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill ahead of the Christmas deadline. The legislation includes big news for the healthcare sector, which responded to the bill with mixed feelings.
One major health policy provision in the package extends key Medicare telehealth flexibilities and...
Proposition 209, the Predatory Debt Collection Act, which would intervene against creditors on behalf of Arizonans with medical debt, passed during the 2022 Midterm Election.
Prop. 209 will lower the maximum interest rates on medical debt and changes rules for debt collection. According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation...Arizona News
President Joe Biden announced on Monday that the returns in the 2022 Midterm Election would not provide support that Congressional Democrats would need to pass legislation codifying abortion protections into federal law.
Republicans have taken control in the U.S. House of Representatives by a slight majority, and while Democrats have...
In a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but many disagree. The Moderna Omicron-specific booster has resumed production and distribution.
The president puzzled epidemiologists, the public and members of his own administration with his remarks in an interview Sunday in which...
On Monday, Planned Parenthood resumed providing abortions at a clinic in Pima County.
According to KNAU, a Planned Parenthood representative said that the clinic would be allowed to provide abortions under a court injunction that stops the Arizona near-total abortion ban from going into effect. A judge is expected to rule on the...
President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on Tuesday, a $430 billion bill that includes a number of health-related programs that the Biden administration has touted as high-priority since the 2020 presidential campaign.
The bill includes an extension for federal health insurance subsidies and allows the government...National News
Over the weekend, Senate Democrats came together to pass the massive Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a proposal to give Medicare the power to negotiate certain drug prices, as well as a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to insurers in the form of tax credits that were initially passed as part of the...Featured
Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Framework for Health Equity at CMS, a frequently-used term by the agency that has been mentioned in nearly every initiative of President Joe Biden's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
According to the CMS blog post "Establishing the Framework for...White Papers, E books, Reports and more
A new report from Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) that used claims data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on appeals and denials for non-group qualified health plans offered through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) federal marketplace found that nearly one-fifth of in-network claims were denied and 72% of reported...CMS Rules
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved Colorado's plan to create a public insurance option through a Section 1332 innovation waiver. The "Colorado Option" will be offered in the Colorado Affordable Care Act Health Insurance Exchange beginning in 2023.
According to Healthcare Dive, the Colorado Option is the...Arizona News
On Friday, June 24, the White House released the Biden administration's "Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis," which outlines a plan to confront the U.S. maternal mortality and morbidity crisis, boost health coverage and provide behavioral health services for expecting and new mothers.
Under President Biden and Vice...
The American insurance-based health care industry certainly has downsides, but none so notorious and archaic as medical debt. Nearly one in five U.S. households have medical debt, and as a result many Americans have lost their homes, assets, had their credit scores lowered beyond repair or been denied subsequent health...
Last week, a man attacked St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing four people and then himself. In response to this as well as a spate of recent mass shootings across the U.S., Congress is moving to include health care worker protections in a bill aimed at curbing gun violence.
The gunman blamed his doctor for pain after a...CMS Rules
Last Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a report that reviewed the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund for 2023 and determined that cost-savings from unexpectedly low Medicare Part B spending in 2022 could be recommended to drive premium cuts for Part B coverage next year.
The...
COVID-19 is still present in Arizona and cases are rapidly rising while Governor Doug Ducey signs a number of anti-public health bills into law preventing any public COVID prevention policies from implementation.
The New York Times COVID Tracker reports that Arizona cases of COVID-19 are up 84% in the past two weeks and the Arizona...
With cases of COVID-19 back on the rise in Arizona and across the country, epidemiologists and experts are asking if yet another Omicron surge looms on the horizon.
In Arizona, nearly 5,500 new cases were recorded over the past week. There were 41 new deaths related to COVID-19 in Arizona, bringing the state total to 30,320. These...
As the COVID-19-related public health emergency (PHE) winds down, concerns are being raised that the structures of support provided to the public during the crisis will have a negative impact on beneficiaries when the PHE comes to a close.
These include Medicaid enrollees, who have not been reviewed for qualification by state Medicaid...
Long COVID still remains elusive to medical and public health officials, and as cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. subside, researchers and the federal government are turning their attention to the lasting effects of COVID-19 infection.
Some studies on Long COVID estimate that 30% of people who catch the virus will experience long-term...
