Health Insurance

George Mink Jr. is a health care outreach worker in Delaware County, Pa. He worries about what will happen when vaccines are no longer paid for by the federal government. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)

Health & Safety

6.8 million expected to lose Medicaid when paperwork hurdles return

12:34pm January 24, 2023

by Alan Yu | WHYY

Since early in the pandemic, people on Medicaid have been able to stay enrolled without reapplying. That will change in April and millions of eligible people will lose the coverage.

An illustration of cookie jars labeled "HMO" and "PPO."

Health & Safety

More people than ever buy insurance on Healthcare.gov

12:49pm January 13, 2023

by Selena Simmons-Duffin

It's the last weekend for Obamacare open enrollment, and nearly 16 million Americans have signed up for a health insurance plan.

Queue Listen Now

Jeff and Kareen King received a hospital bill for $160,000 a few weeks after Jeff had a procedure to restore his heart rhythm.

A 'medical cost-sharing' plan left this minister to pay most of his $160,000 bill

9:56am January 09, 2023

by Bram Sable-Smith

Instead of health insurance, the Rev. Jeff King had signed up for an alternative that left members of the plan to share the costs of health care. That meant lower premiums, but a huge hospital bill.

Health & Safety

Aetna picked to operate North Carolina employee health plan

4:04pm January 04, 2023

by Gary Robertson, Associated Press

Insurance giant Aetna will administer North Carolina's health coverage plan for state government employees, teachers, retirees, and their family members starting in 2025, the State Treasurer's Office announced Wednesday.

Lucy Greco (left), a web-accessibility specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, is blind. She reads most of her documents online, but employs Liza Schlosser-Olroyd as an aide to sort through her paper mail every other month, to make sure Greco hasn't missed a bill or other important correspondence.

Medical bills remain inaccessible for many visually impaired Americans

5:00am December 01, 2022

When health bills aren't legible — via large-print, Braille or other adaptive technology — blind patients can't know what they owe, and are too often sent to debt collections, an investigation finds.

Ellen Haun and Dru Johnston got creative when they needed health insurance.

Arts

'Ellen Needs Insurance' is the real story of an actor in her quest to get coverage

5:00am November 10, 2022

by Manuela López Restrepo

When Ellen Haun and Dru Johnston needed to meet a deadline for health insurance through their union, they decided to get creative.

An illustration of three candy jars. The first jar on the left is locked shut and reads "HMO," the jar in the middle has the lid cracked and reads "PPO," and the last jar is a candy machine that requires a coin to be inserted to release a piece of candy.

Health & Safety

Picking a good health insurance plan can be confusing. Here's what to keep in mind

1:14pm October 07, 2022

by Andee Tagle

This guide from Life Kit includes podcast episodes on how to select the right health care plan, a glossary of common insurance jargon and why you should give your summary of benefits a close read.

Screening mammograms, like this one in Chicago in 2012, are among a number of preventive health services the Affordable Care Act has required health plans to cover at no charge to patients. But that could change, if the Sept. 7 ruling by a federal district judge in Texas is upheld on appeal.

How a Texas court decision threatens Affordable Care Act protections

5:00am September 14, 2022

by Harris Meyer

The ACA has required health insurers to provide many medical screenings and other preventive services with no out-of-pocket cost to health plan members. But a recent court decision could upend that.

Tennessee's Medicaid program, TennCare, dropped Katie Lester and her son Mason (right), because of a clerical error in 2019. The Lester family was left uninsured for most of the next three years, including during the birth of youngest child Memphis (left)

They lost Medicaid when paperwork was sent to a pasture, signaling the mess to come

5:01am August 02, 2022

by Brett Kelman

Tennessee expects to soon disenroll about 300,000 people from Medicaid. But families like the Lesters have been entangled in bureaucracy and clerical mistakes, causing them to unfairly lose coverage.

Insurers are complying with federal rules aimed at price transparency that took effect July 1, but consumer use of the data may have to wait until private firms synthesize it.

Health insurance prices for care are now out there, but finding them is an ordeal

10:25am July 27, 2022

by Julie Appleby

A dump of tens of thousands of colossal digital files from a single insurer is not unusual, and it'll be weeks before data firms can put the information in a usable format for employers and patients.