The recent U.S. economic recession was the longest and most severe since World War II. During this period, personal spending on health care grew at the slowest rate in over 50 years, suggesting that Americans used less health care. A new study finds that these cut backs were not limited to Americans who lost their health insurance, nor restricted to unnecessary services...

It’s not often that you hear the leader of Fortune 100 company publicly acknowledge the imminent demise of his venerable, profitable business model. Yet, speaking at the HIMSS12 Conference in Las Vegas, Aetna CEO, Chairman and President Mark Bertolini, said a reckoning for the traditional health insurance model was ...

In the heated debate over to what extent religiously affiliated employers should be required to provide free contraception for workers, no one has talked much about what methods are available to women who want to prevent pregnancy and how their choices might change if cost were removed from the equation. ...

As health care costs continue to climb, many midsize employers are turning to self-funding as a cost-effective way to provide health benefits to their employees. Fifty-eight percent of employers with 200 to 999 employees self-funded their health care programs in 2010, up from 44% in 1999, according to the ...

Private health insurance is the main source of health coverage for the majority of people in the United States. Approximately 58% of all Americans have private health care coverage. For elderly citizens and eligible children and families from low-income households, public programs are the primary source of health cover. Public programs include Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP...

BOISE, Idaho — Republican lawmakers in a handful of states are opening another front in the war against President Obama’s health care overhaul, seizing on the hot-button issue of birth control with bills that would allow insurance companies to ignore new federal rules requiring them to cover contraception. Measures ...

A new RAND Corporation study concludes that eliminating a key part of health care reform that requires all Americans to have health insurance would sharply lower the number of people gaining coverage, but would not dramatically increase the cost of buying policies through new insurance exchanges. The study comes as the U.S...

The insurance industry is concerned it will take a hit from the Obama administration’s mandate that they provide birth control in health plans for employees of religious organizations that object to the coverage. Publicly, the health insurance industry has avoided getting involved in the fight. But in private, ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—President Barack Obama on Monday proposed more aggressive deficit reductions through savings from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care programs than the White House put forward just five months ago. The president's budget proposal for fiscal year 2013 seeks a total of $364 billion in health care ...

President Obama's efforts last week have failed to quell the fury over his decision to require most health plans to cover contraception. Republicans are still promising a fight in Congress, and two leading Catholic groups remain on the fence although the administration thought they had been won over. In ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that laws permitting children to stay on their parents' health insurance through age 26 result in improved access to health care compared to states without those laws. This analysis indicates the potential positive impact of a key provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA)...

Catholic bishops said Friday night that they would not support the Obama administration's proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers' health plans. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had led opposition to the regulation, issued a statement saying ...

The financial burden Americans face paying out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs has declined, although prescription costs remain a significant challenge for people with lower incomes and those with public insurance, according to a new RAND Corporation study...

How can insurers justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient per year on "orphan drugs" - extremely expensive medications for rare conditions that are mostly chronic and life-threatening - when this money could provide greater overall health benefit if spread out among many other patients? Those spending decisions reflect the "rule of rescue," the value that o...

The Obama administration released finalized new rules for how health insurers describe what their plans cover Thursday, and told insurers that they have until September to prepare the documents for the new open enrollment season. Insurers will have to provide an eight-page summary of benefits in a standardized question-and-answer ...

There are ways in which patients who leave the hospital against medical advice wind up paying for that decision. Being saddled with the full cost of their hospital stay, however, is not one of them. Insurance companies know this. Patients who walk out may know this. But many physicians, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, do not...

The White House may be open to compromising on a new rule that requires religious schools and hospitals to provide employees with access to free birth control, a senior strategist for President Obama said on Tuesday morning. David Axelrod, who serves as a top adviser to Mr. Obama’s re-election ...

Bridgette Dunlap, a Fordham University law student, knew that the school’s health plan had to pay for birth control pills, in keeping with New York state law. What she did not find out until she was in an examining room, “in the paper dress,” was that the student health service ...

Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients. ...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. House of Representatives this week will vote on legislation that would kill a health care reform law provision to establish a voluntary long-term care program, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “We will repeal the CLASS Act,” Speaker Boehner said during an address last week before the ...