insured news from FierceHealthcare

Following disclosures forced by a lawsuit, HealthNet has been fined $1 million by the state's Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) for failing to admit that it did indeed have plans in place... Read more...

With hospital emergency departments already taxed enough, the following isn't reassuring. A new study concludes that the proportion of outpatient ED charges paid by both government and private... Read more...

Officials in D.C. are troubled by a newly-documented rise in avoidable hospitalizations among children and adults, a trend which cuts across both insured and uninsured patients. Statistics released... Read more...

All signs seem to suggest that California is poised to move ahead with substantial health system reforms, some of which hit providers in the pocketbook. However, the role of doctors in the proposed... Read more...

Following the high-profile lead of Massachusetts, states like California are considering legislation requiring that citizens have health coverage. And in theory, that's good for providers, who... Read more...

> Tenet's chief medical officer has announced that she's leaving to take a similar position at Partners Community Healthcare in Boston. Read more...

Even patients who have decent health insurance can still lose their job, hit plan coverage limits, face exclusions which prevent them getting coverage for special needs and more. In other words,... Read more...

Struggling to pay even their basic expenses, primary care doctors are increasingly asking patients for an annual fee in addition to co-payments on insured services. This isn't a high-touch concierge... Read more...

Even when other factors like age and gender are factored out, it seems that under- and uninsured patients with cancer are likely to be diagnosed at a later stage in their disease than patients with private insurance, according to a new pair of studies published in the journal Cancer. The studies, which looked at the breast cancer and oral cancer, found that the availability and type of health insurance could predict the severity of the illness at the point when it was diagnosed. …

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> New Hampshire hospitals shifted $345 million onto privately insured patients in 2005, according to a new report. Article

> Cigna HealthCare for Seniors has agreed to reimburse doctors for Web-based "e-visits" and online health services. Article

> Autism diagnoses are on the rise. Now a …

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