CHARITY CARE SPENDING BY CALIFORNIA HOSPITALS PLUNGES SINCE OBAMACARE WENT INTO EFFECT
By Harriet Blair Rowan California hospitals are providing significantly less free and discounted care to low-income patients since the Affordable Care Act took effect. As a proportion of their operating expenses, the state’s general acute-care hospitals spent less than half on these patients in 2017 than they did in 2013, according

SOCIAL SECURITY ERROR JEOPARDIZES MEDICARE COVERAGE FOR 250,000 SENIORS
By Susan Jaffe At least a quarter of a million Medicare beneficiaries may receive bills for as many as five months of premiums they thought they already paid. But they shouldn’t toss the letter in the garbage. It’s not a scam or a mistake. Because of what the
VOLUNTARY MACRA CODES MAY DETERMINE WHAT DOCTORS ARE PAID
New patient relationship categories and codes are one of the most important provisions of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), according to a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. In January 2018, the billing-code modifiers, which allow clinicians to report their relationship to a patient at a