Health Care Costs

The steep prices — and popularity — of Ozempic and similar weight-loss and diabetes drugs could soon make them a priority for Medicare drug price negotiations. List prices for a month’s supply of the drugs range from $936 to $1,349, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. The Inflation Reduction Act President Biden signed in […]

California’s Office of Health Care Affordability faces a herculean task in its plan to slow runaway health care spending. The goal of the agency, established in 2022, is to make care more affordable and accessible while improving health outcomes, especially for the most disadvantaged state residents. That will require a sustained wrestling match with a […]

Medicaid — the state-federal health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans — has cut more than 22 million recipients since spring 2023. One of them was the son of Ashley Eades. Her family lost their Medicaid coverage in the “unwinding” of protections that had barred states from dropping people for years during the covid […]

KFF Health News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed weight loss drugs on KMOX’s “Total Information AM” on May 29. Click here to hear Rayasam on “Total Information AM” Read Rayasam’s “High Price of Popular Diabetes Drugs Deprives Low-Income People of Effective Treatment” Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health, discussed […]

When Cassie Cox ended up in the emergency room in January, the Bainbridge, Georgia, resident was grateful for the Obamacare insurance policy she had recently selected for coverage in 2024. Cox, 40, qualified for an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan with no monthly premium due to her relatively low income. And after she cut her […]

Vincent Wasney and his fiancée, Sarah Eberlein, had never visited the ocean. They’d never even been on a plane. But when they bought their first home in Saginaw, Michigan, in 2018, their real estate agent gifted them tickets for a Royal Caribbean cruise. After two years of delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, they set […]

For the past year and a half, Tandra Cooper Harris and her husband, Marcus, who both have diabetes, have struggled to fill their prescriptions for the medications they need to control their blood sugar. Without Ozempic or a similar drug, Cooper Harris suffers blackouts, becomes too tired to watch her grandchildren, and struggles to earn […]

Angling to tap into strong support for the sweeping health law he helped pass 14 years ago, one of President Joe Biden’s latest reelection strategies is to remind voters that former President Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “Folks, he’s coming for your health care, and we’re not going to let it […]

Durante el último año y medio, Tandra Cooper Harris y su esposo, Marcus, ambos viven con diabetes, han luchado para volver a llenar sus recetas de los medicamentos que necesitan para controlar su azúcar en sangre. Sin Ozempic o un medicamento similar, Cooper Harris sufre desmayos, se cansa demasiado para cuidar a sus nietos y […]

Stronger actions are needed immediately to thwart insurance brokers who fraudulently enroll or switch people in Affordable Care Act coverage, Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said Monday. “We want the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to hold these brokers criminally responsible for ripping people off this way,” he told […]