http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (HealthDay)—More than one in four of those eligible for new premium assistance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) do not have a checking account and will not be able to receive premiums from insurance companies, according to a report published by Jackson Hewitt. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-uninsured-excluded-aca.html Health Fri, 24 May 2013 13:20:02 EST news288617879 The rising cost of Medicare can be cut through strategies such as increasing premiums and raising the eligibility age, but those moves could drive many elderly Americans from the program, leaving them with limited access to health services, according to a new study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-curbing-medicare-seniors.html Health Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:02 EST news287059493 Eighty-four million people―nearly half of all working-age U.S. adults―went without health insurance for a time last year or had out-of-pocket costs that were so high relative to their income they were considered underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund 2012 Biennial Health Insurance Survey. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-health-survey-million-people-uninsured.html Health Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:01 EST news286128493 (HealthDay)—The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs of certain newly eligible adult Medicaid beneficiaries under the Affordable Care Act. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-fed-gov-medicaid-enrollees-aca.html Health Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:30:02 EST news284281514 Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have selected the health insurance plan in their state that will serve as the "essential health benefit" package sold by all insurers participating in the new health insurance marketplace and the individual and small-group markets beginning January 2014, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study. Designed to improve the adequacy of health coverage, the essential health benefit covers 10 broad service categories, including ambulatory patient care, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, and prescription drugs. The federal government allowed each state to choose a benchmark plan to help meet the Affordable Care Act requirement that the essential health benefit reflect a typical employer health insurance plan. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-states-benchmark-essential-health-benefit.html Health Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:48:34 EST news282368905 The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 ("Parity Act") increased access to mental health and substance use services in hospitals, yet consumers continued to pay more out-of-pocket for substance use admissions than for other types of hospital admissions, finds a new Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) report. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-mental-health-substance-hospitals-parity-law.html Health Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:15:55 EST news281164544 (HealthDay)—In a final rule, which will make purchasing health coverage easier for consumers, mental health and substance use benefits will be expanded to 62 million Americans, according to a report published Feb. 20 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-mental-health-substance-disorder-benefits.html Health Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:30:01 EST news280765815 (HealthDay)—The public's health care agenda places creation of a health insurance exchange or marketplace as a top priority, according to a report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-health-exchanges-priority-agenda.html Health Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:01 EST news279990479 (AP)—The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge from former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and other Social Security recipients who say they have the right to reject Medicare in favor of continuing health coverage from private insurers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-high-court-medicare.html Health Mon, 07 Jan 2013 10:15:10 EST news276776105 (HealthDay)—There has been a recent increase in the percentage of workers in the private sector who are enrolled in self-insured health plans, in which the employer assumes the financial risk related to health insurance (unlike a fully-insured plan, where the insurance company assumes the risk), according to research published in the November issue of the Employee Benefit Research Institute's Notes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-workers-self-insured-health.html Health Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:30:01 EST news273845636 Two-thirds (69%) of U.S. primary care physicians reported using electronic medical records (EMRs) in 2012, up from less than half (46%) in 2009, according to findings from the 2012 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey, published as a Web First online today in the journal Health Affairs. Primary care physicians in the U.S.—the only country in the study without universal health coverage—stand out in the survey for reporting that their patients often cannot afford care (59%). By comparison, between 4 percent and 25 percent of physicians reported affordability problems for their patients in Norway (4%), the U.K. (13%), Switzerland (16%), Germany (21%), and Australia (25%). Moreover, more than half of U.S. doctors (52%) said insurance restrictions on their care decisions are a major time concern—by far the highest rate in the 10-country survey. U.S. physicians also were the most negative about their country's health system, with only 15 percent agreeing the health care system works well. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-survey-percent-primary-doctors-electronic.html Health Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00:01 EST news272130742 (Medical Xpress)—About 115,000 women lose their private health insurance every year in the wake of divorce, according to a University of Michigan study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-divorce-thousands-women-health-coverage.html Health Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:13:13 EST news271959177 (HealthDay)—Two years after it was signed into law, Americans' views on the Affordable Care Act continue to track along party lines, even among those who say they've personally been affected by the controversial health-reform legislation, a new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll finds. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-partisanship-americans-attitudes-health-care-reform.html Health Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:20:01 EST news270398117 In this month's editorial, the PLOS Medicine Editors comment on the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest World Health Report, originally planned for publication in 2012, and the outcomes of the journal's collaboration with WHO on the intended theme of "no health without research." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-plos-medicine-editors-comment-world.html Health Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:00:03 EST news267808432 The first ever global study to examine how changes in health inequality are related to overall coverage of maternal and child health interventions has shown that the countries making the most rapid progress in increasing maternal and child health coverage are those with programmes which most effectively address the needs of the poorest women and children in a population. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-equitable-approach-rapidly-maternal-child.html Health Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:08 EST news267291263 Two studies from UNICEF, forming The Lancet Series on equity in child survival, health, and nutrition, provide compelling evidence for the strategic importance of focusing global health improvement efforts on the poorest and hardest to reach children. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-unicef-highlight-importance-equity-maternal.html Health Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:04 EST news267291141 (AP)—The federal government will include about 50 types of cancer on the list of Sept. 11 World Trade Center-related illnesses covered by a program to pay for health coverage. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-wtc-health-cancer.html Health Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:56:27 EST news266514977 Mexico has achieved universal health coverage in less than ten years, with more than 50 million previously uninsured Mexicans enrolling on a public medical insurance scheme since 2004. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-mexico-universal-health-coverage-decade.html Health Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:30:01 EST news264261592 Maryland and other states have a lot riding on the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), regardless of how the justices rule, University of Maryland experts say. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-state-hinge-scotus-health-umd.html Health Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:44:45 EST news259512276 A total of 46.3 million people in the United States do not have health coverage, a trend that has been rising in the past 15 years, said a US survey published Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-million-americans-lack-health.html Health Tue, 19 Jun 2012 04:12:42 EST news259297954 Nine out of 10 Californians under the age of 65 will be enrolled in health insurance programs as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a joint study by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-non-elderly-californians.html Health Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:37:17 EST news258899801 US President Barack Obama's landmark health reform faces a make-or-break test in the Supreme Court next week in a historic case likely to shape the nation's future political landscape. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-obama-health-reform-supreme-court.html Health Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:30:01 EST news251695007 (Medical Xpress) -- The cost of caring for the uninsured population who will gain coverage through the Affordable Care Act of 2014 can be reduced by almost half once the act is implemented, according to a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-uninsured-significantly-ed.html Health Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:10:01 EST news247998679 The historic RAND Health Insurance Experiment found that patients had little or no control over their health care spending once they began to receive a physician's care, but a new study shows that this has changed for those enrolled in consumer-directed health plans. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-consumers-health-previously-thought.html Health Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:39:52 EST news236515180 The estimates of the population without health insurance in the United States remained unchanged in 2010, as compared to 2009, reflecting the counteracting effects of not only the sluggish economic recovery but also the preliminary benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), says Timothy McBride, PhD, leading health economist and associate dean of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-tug-of-war-economy-health-reform.html Health Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:03:44 EST news235213408 One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-rutgers-nj-immigrant-children-adult.html Health Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:00:19 EST news228567608 A new poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe finds 63% of Massachusetts residents support the health care reform legislation enacted in 2006, 21% oppose it while 6% are not sure and 9% have not heard or read about the law. The percentage of residents supporting the law has increased since a 2009 poll (53%). Support for the law varied by party affiliation, with 77% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 40% of Republicans saying they support the legislation. The poll was conducted May 24-26, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-massachusetts-landmark-health-reform-law.html Health Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:28:43 EST news226578505 As the U.S. immigrant population grows it will be necessary to address the vast number of immigrants who do not have access to health insurance coverage, or who face other barriers to accessing health care, the American College of Physicians (ACP) said in a new policy paper released today at Internal Medicine 2011, ACP's annual scientific meeting. National Immigration Policy and Access to Health Care discusses the challenges immigrants face in obtaining health care services. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-physicians-access-health-immigrants.html Health Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:29:18 EST news221416116