A new analysis of more than 3 million claims for Medicare patients found that patients enrolled in a managed Medicare Advantage plan had better health outcomes than those senior enrolled in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare model.

With recognition that "the path through accountable care is unknown," IDC Health Insights has launched a new Accountable Care Maturity Model, designed to help healthcare organizations gauge their own status and make strategic decisions for funding business and IT initiatives.

One of the principal arguments for passing healthcare reform legislation circled around the theory of cost shifting. In essence, when hospitals care for uninsured patients that don't pay bills, or when they receive low reimbursements for Medicare or Medicaid patients, they charge insurers higher fees to make up for the losses.

The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association (AOPA) is suing the Department of Health and Human Services over 2011 rule changes for prosthetic reimbursements requiring physician documentation, which the association claims is wreaking financial havoc on O&P practitioners due to prepayment audits and retroactive application.

A Google search for "health insurance" brings eHealthInsurance.com as one of the top results -- one reason, eHealth executives say, that state exchanges should follow the federal government in allowing consumers to enroll in subsidized health plans through private web exchanges like eHealthInsurance.

As the GOP-controlled House of Representatives prepares again to vote this week on a repeal of the 2010 health law, some key Republican senators have seized on recent news developments to show their ire.

The federal government has uncovered a string of alleged Medicare fraud attempts totalling $223 million and involving 89 individuals in eight cities.