LADUE, Mo. — Over four consecutive days in January, Margaret Hvatum ran a 5K, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a full marathon. The 70-year-old covered a combined distance that’s nearly equivalent to running the length of Manhattan four times. By the end of the month, she was in a hospital bed. Hvatum, a part-time computer…
A major Medicare Advantage company has paid the government more than $342 million to help settle allegations that it overcharged the federal healthcare program for years. Elevance Health, which covers about 2 million people on Medicare, sent the money to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services via wire transfer on May 27, court records…
Sen. Ron Wyden and 14 Democratic co-sponsors plan to introduce legislation Thursday to cap consumers’ potential out-of-pocket costs in traditional Medicare, resurfacing a long-running debate over why the program doesn’t limit beneficiary spending. Even the bill’s backers say securing passage this year is a long shot. But the effort is one more opportunity for Democrats…
Bill Curry, 65, raises cattle on the same land in rural Oklahoma once owned by his father and generations before him. Each quarter, for several years, he has made the 2½-hour drive to Oklahoma City for an epidural in his spine to treat his back pain. But this year, because of a new Medicare program,…
Tired of watching its employers struggle to afford the cost of healthcare, Republican-controlled Indiana is trying a traditionally liberal tactic to control costs: setting government price controls on hospitals. Under a law enacted last year, five of Indiana’s largest nonprofit hospital systems cannot charge patients covered by job-based health plans more than an established price…
