Results for search "Health Costs".
12 Nov
A new study finds alcohol consumption increased during the COVID pandemic and hasn’t returned to previous levels since the crisis ended.
If Congress lets healthcare tax credits established during the pandemic expire, 4 million Americans will become uninsured, a new analysis warns.
The tax credits, which have significantly lowered out-of-pocket costs for millions of Americans, are set to expire at the end of 2025.
"Allowing these credits to expire will force families to choose between healthcare and other necessities ...
One piece left out of the abortion debate is the high transportation and medical bills facing women forced to leave their state to obtain the procedure.
A new study is the first to give hard numbers on those concerns.
It finds that, even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, 65% of women who traveled to another state to undergo abortion incurred "catastrophic" bills causing them...
More than 1 in 5 Americans likely suffer from long COVID, a new AI-assisted review has found.
The analysis suggests that nearly 23% of U.S. adults experience the symptoms of long COVID, according to results published Nov. 8 in the journal Med.
That’s much higher than the 7% prevalence of long COVID that’s ...
Having a child can cause significant and ongoing financial hardship for new parents, even if they are covered by health insurance, a new study shows.
More than half of people with private insurance spent more than $1,000 out of pocket on childbirth, and nearly 40% reported bein...
Hospice care is a compassionate and heartfelt enterprise, involving a medical team dedicated to maintaining a person’s comfort and dignity as they face the final curtain.
Now, new research shows hospice is also incredibly cost-effective as a health care service, a new report says.
For-p...
Health insurers would be required to cover the cost of over-the-counter birth control and emergency contraception under new rules proposed by the White House on Monday.
"Since Roe v. Wade was overturned more than two years ago, Republican elected officials have made clear they want to ban or restrict birth control, defund federal programs that help women access contraception, and repeal t...
A simple tweak in available vial sizes of the breakthrough Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi could save Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars each year, a new analysis claims.
About 6% of Leqembi (lecane...
During a tense hearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen faced tough questions over the company's high prices for its blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.
While testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pens...
Americans have the worst health care among the world’s wealthy nations, a new report says.
People in the United States die the earliest and live the sickest lives out of 10 developed countries, even though the United States spends the most on health care, according to the annual report by health care think-tank The Commonwealth Fund.
Australia, the Netherlands and the United K...
Beginning Jan. 1, Americans with private health insurance coverage should gain better access to mental health care, as well as care to help ease substance abuse, federal officials announced Monday.
“Like medical care, mental health care is vital to the well-being of America’s workers,” U.S. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su
Too many U.S. seniors are skipping their prescription meds due to cost, and the problem is most acute among the poor and chronically ill, new data shows.
Almost all (88.6%) Americans age 65 or older have been prescribed at least one prescription medicine, according to 2021-2022 data from an annual federal survey.
That percentage rises from 86.9% among folks aged 65 to 74 to more th...
The care of people seriously harmed by spinal cord injury can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a new analysis suggests that ability to pay influences how long a patient remains on life support.
In a study of more than 8,400 U.S. adults with severe spinal cord injury, "uninsured patients had greater odds of withdrawal of life-supporting treatment," compared to those who had priva...
The Biden administration said Thursday that it has signed deals with drug companies that will lower the prices on 10 of the most popular and expensive drugs used by American seniors.
Taxpayers should save $6 billion because of the new prices, while seniors using Medicare could save roughly $1.5 billion on their medications, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a new...
When it comes to Medicaid and vision care, how much coverage people get depends on the state in which they live, a new study finds.
Most Medicaid enrollees have at least some routine vision coverage, but an estimated 6.5 million adults live in states without comprehensive coverage for routine eye exams, researchers found. Likewise, about 14.6 million adults didn’t have comprehensiv...
Older voters are keenly interested in the cost of health care, a new survey has found.
Five of the top six health issues among older adults have to do with health care costs, according to new data from the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging.
“There have been efforts in recent years to reduce costs of some types of care for older adults, especially t...
Pregnant women and new moms have better access to treatment for mood disorders, thanks to Obamacare, a new study finds.
More women received treatment for their pregnancy-related depression or anxiety after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect in 2014, research...
Following several years of record low rates of uninsured Americans, a new survey finds more folks are once again without health insurance.
More than 8% of Americans did not have health coverage during the first few months of 2024, according to findings published Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for D...
Screening for cancer saves lives, but a new report shows it comes with a hefty price tag: The United States spends at least $43 billion annually on tests that check for five major cancers.
Published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the new analysis focused on screenings for br...
Insured working-age adults are frequently being hit with medical bills for services that should have been covered, a new Commonwealth Fund survey has found.
Close to half (45%) of insured workers have received a bill or copay in the past year for a service they thought should have been paid by health insurance, the survey shows.
Fewer than half challenged the bills, mostly because t...
Medicare Advantage plans are touted as a great alternative to traditional Medicare, offering seniors easier access to doctors, hospitals and prescription drugs.
But access to a good Medicare Advantage plan relies heavily on where a person lives, a new study finds.
People are less likely to find a five-star Medicare Advantage plan if they live in a U.S. county with higher poverty and...
Following the end of temporary pandemic-era rules expanding access to Medicaid, about 10 million Americans have lost that coverage.
But a new report finds that most folks who've lost coverage have done so because of paperwork issues, and they're far more likely to be people of color.
"A lot of people got kicked off Medicaid for administrative reasons,"said senior study author
Allowing pharmacists to treat minor illnesses could potentially expand health care access to more people and save millions of dollars, a new study suggests.
Care for a range of minor health issues -- urinary tract infections, shingles, animal bites and headaches -- would cost an average of about $...
Having private insurance may not be all it is cracked up to be when it comes to hospital bills, new research warns.
In a report published Monday by the nonprofit research institute RAND Corp., researchers discovered that patients with private health insurance may wind up paying more for procedures or tests p...
A budget-busting 3.6 million Medicare recipients could now be eligible for coverage of the weight-loss drug Wegovy, a new KFF analysis says.
That's because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Wegovy (semaglutide) to reduce the risk of heart attacks ...
America's mental health woes essentially serve as an annual economic downturn for the nation, a new study says.
Mental illness costs the U.S. economy $282 billion every year, equivalent to the average economic recession, researchers report.
That estimate amounts to about 1.7% of American annual spending, and is about 30% larger than previous attempts to approximate the overall cost ...
About six out of 10 working-age adults hit with a cancer diagnosis say it put real pressure on their financial survival, a new report finds.
"Today's findings reiterate the critical role access to affordable, quality care and paid family medical leave plays in reducing the financial toll of cance...
Americans living in areas where primary care doctors and nurse practitioners are in short supply face a greater risk for emergency surgeries and complications, new research shows.
They're also more likely to wind up back in the hospital after they've left it.
That's because serious health issues don't get addressed until they become emergencies, said lead study author
The cost to American families of caring for a child with a mental health condition rose by almost a third between 2017 and 2021, a new report finds, to an average $4,361 per year.
Overall, American families spent an estimated $31 billion in 2021 on child mental health services, which now make up nearly half (about 47%) of all child medical spending, the report found.
The findi...
Unexpected medical bills and high health care costs are dominating an election where kitchen table economic problems weigh heavily on voter's minds, a new KFF poll has found.
Voters struggling to pay their monthly bills are most eager to hear presidential candidates talk about economic and health care issues, according to the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll.
Nearly three in four adu...
People with diabetes have to spend a ton of money to stay healthy, a new study reports.
Total and out-of-pocket costs for diabetics run hundreds to thousands of dollars more than regular medical expenses for people without diabetes, researchers found.
Type 1 diabetes costs nearly $25,700 a year to properly manage, with out-of-pocket charges running more than $2,000 for patients, res...
Millions of Black and Hispanic middle-class adults won't be able to afford senior housing and health care expenses as they grow old, a new study warns.
The number of middle-income older adults of color is expected to double within the next decade, rising from 12% in ...
Dementia care can eat through the savings of cash-strapped seniors, a new study warns.
The average senior with dementia in non-nursing residential care facilities spent 97% of their monthly income on long-term care, researchers found. Meanwhile, those living in nursing homes spend nearly 83% of their monthly income on their care, results show.
"Because dementia is such an expensive ...
Medical tourism to Mexico for cosmetic procedures exposed Americans to a deadly fungal infection last year, a new report shows.
An outbreak of Fusarium solani meningitis occurred at two clinics in Matamoros specializing in elective cosmetic procedures like breast augmentation, liposuction and Brazilian butt lifts.
The new report, published Feb. 8 in the
Folks squeezed financially may find themselves shut out from medical care, leading to delayed cancer diagnoses, a new report finds.
A full third of cancer patients suffered some form of recent financial hardship -- a bankruptcy, lien or eviction -- prior to their diagnosis, according to research led by the American Cancer Society and the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
These patient...
Americans pay nearly three times as much for their prescription drugs as residents of other nations do, new research shows.
Drug prices in the United States average nearly 2.8 times those seen in 33 other countries, the report from RAND Health Care found.
Brand-name drugs are even more expensive, with U.S. prices...
Ever glance at your paycheck and wonder why your take-home pay is so much less than you'd expect?
The rising cost of employer-sponsored health insurance is a major reason why, a new study argues.
The cost of employer-sponsored health benefits increased much faster than workers' pay since the late 1980s, and likely reduced wages by an average of about $9,000 a year by 2019, the study...
A record-breaking 20 million Americans have already signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.
"Today, we hit a major milestone in lowering costs and ensuring all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care: a record-breaking 20 million Americans have enrolled in health care coverage through the Affordable Care ...
HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a lifeline for Americans, many of them gay men, who are at high risk of contracting the virus that causes AIDS.
But a case that is winding its way through the court system might push the cost of PrEP to levels that are unaffordable for many -- and that could cost lives, the authors of a new study warn.
"Our findings suggest that out-of-pocket c...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday gave the nod to a Florida plan to import drugs from Canada at much lower prices than in the United States.
The approval could prove to be a major turning point for the United States' prescription drug market.
U.S. residents can now buy directly from Canadian pharmacies out of their own pockets, but state Medicaid programs have not been...
The average cost of hospital care for COVID-19 patients skyrocketed during the pandemic, outstripping what might be expected under inflation, a new study shows.
Average hospital costs for COVID patients increased five times faster than the rate of medical inflation through the first two years of the pandemic, researchers have found.
This is at least partly due to the pricey medical ...
Over 15 million Americans have signed up for health insurance using the Affordable Care Act's federal marketplace, a 33% increase from the year before, preliminary government data shows.
On Dec. 15, the deadline for coverage that starts Jan. 1, a whopping 745,000 people picked their health insurance plan using the healthcare.gov website, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (H...
An overwhelming majority of older Americans think health insurers and Medicare should cover the cost of weight-loss medications like Ozempic, Wegovy or Zepbound, a new survey has found.
More than four out of five older adults (83%) think insurance companies should pay for drugs that help obese people manage their weight, according to poll re...
The Biden administration is flexing some federal muscle in its push for lower drug prices, warning pharmaceutical companies that it might use its authority to cancel patent protections if a medication costs too much.
Federal law allows the government to grant patent licenses if taxpayer dollars were used in the development of inventions -- including drugs.
In a
A new 'technopill' can safely monitor a person's vital signs from inside their bodies, researchers report.
The vitals-monitoring (VM) Pill works by tracking the small vibrations in the body associated with lungs breathing and the heart beating.
It can detect if a person stops breathing, which gives it the potential to provide real-time information about patients at risk of opioid ov...
If you need medical care, you're more likely to skip it due to cost issues if you're American than if you're Australian, Canadian, British or French, a new report finds.
Rising costs aren't just causing poorer Americans to forgo needed care: The Commonwealth Fund report found higher-income people often doing the same.
"Adults in the United States with lower and average incomes are m...
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 8, 2023 (Healthday News) -- A new drug to treat postpartum depression will cost nearly $16,000 for a 14-day course of treatment, a price tag that has doctors worried that some patients won't be able to afford the medication.
Zurzuvae (zuranolone) was first ...
Gun violence causes a ripple effect that creates a lasting impact on young people lucky enough to survive being shot, as well as their families, a comprehensive new study finds.
Child and teenaged gunshot survivors carry the physical and emotional scars of violence, and their families suffer even more dramatic aftereffects, the Harvard-associated researchers found.
"The unspeakable ...
A growing number of people have become unpaid caregivers for loved ones, and a new report says many are overlooking the financial consequences of their selflessness.
One in five adults now provide uncompensated care to family and loved ones with health problems, according to the
Soon, you may be able to step out on your front porch and wait for your prescription medication to drop from the sky.
On Wednesday, Amazon Pharmacy announced that it is starting to test speedy prescription drug delivery by drones in selected locations.
"We're taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,"
Dementia can take a big bite out of an American's bank account, robbing 60% of a patient's net worth in the eight years after a diagnosis, a new study says.
The average dementia patient will also see a doubling of out-of-pocket health care expenses in those first eight years, said researchers who studied thousands of seniors with and without the brain disorder.
"We found a prof...