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Unlike their health law counterparts, young adults can't stay on TRICARE until age 26

Young adult dependents are not allowed to stay on TRICARE until age 26 unlike under the health law, Fox News reports. Some health law fine print means states have significant leeway in deciding how much or how little dental coverage to offer to children.

13 Nov 2013

Tech companies ready new tools to cash in on health law enrollment

Tech companies are preparing new software and apps to cash in on the million of Americans who will soon be making insurance decisions for the first time. In the meantime, how three 20-somethings were able to get healthcare.gov up and running when more than 50 contractors could not.

13 Nov 2013

Oversight investigation turns up CMS memo warning of 'high' website security risks

But news outlets are reporting that the project manager working on the healthcare.gov website was not made aware of these issues.

13 Nov 2013

Searching for a fix to the canceled policy problem

Politico reports that finding a fix that won't disrupt the insurance market is no easy task. Meanwhile, in California, Anthem Blue Cross has announced that it will grant a two-month extension to a portion of its canceled policyholders.

13 Nov 2013

People suffering from chronic pain, emotional distress likely to receive long-term opioid therapy

People suffering from chronic non-cancer pain and severe emotional distress, such as depression, anxiety and substance use, are likely to receive long-term opioid therapy despite a lack of evidence that this treatment helps, reports a new review in General Hospital Psychiatry.

13 Nov 2013

Lawmakers face their own health law reality: Navigating the online exchanges

Lawmakers and some of their aides are preparing to navigate the health law's online insurance exchanges to buy coverage. An Alaskan senator is declining the employer contribution to buy coverage, and some senators will ask for a full investigation of the troubled startup of Healthcare.gov.

13 Nov 2013

Challenge of signing up young adults; subsidies key to insurance decisions

NewsHour looks at the efforts in Wisconsin to interest the "young invincibles" in health care coverage. Meanwhile, news organizations in Connecticut and Minnesota look at the complicated calculations for premium subsidies.

13 Nov 2013

Insurers push for workaround that would allow them to directly enroll people

The New York Times reports on this push, which is one of several ways some are discussing to get around the current technology problems plaguing the Obama administration's enrollment effort. Also in the news, The Wall Street Journal reports that some of these difficulties are trickling down from the federal online insurance marketplace to certain state exchanges.

12 Nov 2013

Early enrollment numbers far below administration targets

The projections, which put the total number of enrollees so far at fewer than 50,000 people, is just a fraction of the tally the Obama administration initially was hoping for.

12 Nov 2013

Zients warned years ago about problems with federal IT; Obama administration turning to insurers' expertise for website difficulties

Jeffrey D. Zients, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and management consultant, joined the Obama White House in 2009 with a mandate to streamline the federal bureaucracy. A year later, he issued a prescient warning. The government "largely has missed out" on the information technology revolution, Mr. Zients said in a 2010 internal memo. "I.T. projects too often cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than they should, take years longer than necessary to deploy and deliver technologies that are obsolete by the time they are completed," he wrote. These days, Mr. Zients is witnessing that ineptitude up close as the emergency fix-it man charged with righting HealthCare.gov (Stolberg, 11/10).

12 Nov 2013

State highlights: New Hampshire lawmakers contemplate Medicaid expansion; wide variation in indigent care among California counties

A selection of health policy stories from Massachusetts, Oregon and Iowa.

12 Nov 2013

Viewpoints: Shinseki's efforts haven't yet solved VA's problems; treating children with mental illness is complicated; abuse of painkillers

Just in time for Veterans Day, the embattled secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, announced last week that his department had reduced its backlog of overdue disability claims from more than 600,000 in March to about 400,000. "The trend line is in the right direction," Shinseki told reporters, noting that the VA had cut the number of claims older than a year by 93%. With hundreds of thousands of cases still unresolved, Shinseki hasn't gotten much credit so far - but to the surprise of his critics, he's on track to achieve his goal of eliminating the backlog by 2015. Still, that won't solve all the VA's problems; far from it (Doyle McManus, 11/10).

12 Nov 2013

Choosing right health insurance could be more difficult for uninsured: Study

The new federal health-care law gives millions of Americans access to medical insurance. However, choosing the right coverage - a daunting task for most people - could be even more difficult for those who have never had health insurance, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

12 Nov 2013

Issa issues another subpoena about health law website -- his target: Top White House tech officer

So far, the White House has resisted congressional Republican efforts to speak with chief technology officer Todd Park about the roll-out of healthcare.gov.

12 Nov 2013

'Crunch time' for Obama on health law; the problems with that apology; young people feeling the sting of higher prices

But today, it's Obama in the spotlight. A president famous for his unflappability, he is now struggling to square assurances that he is on top of the problems confronting his administration with assertions that he was unaware of the problems as they were developing.

12 Nov 2013

Health law overview: At the state level, divided government appears to function better than in congress

Some states have had more success striking compromises that expand health insurance coverage.

12 Nov 2013

Proposals likely this week to respond to health law policy cancellations

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is among those who are expected to advance legislation. Her measure would extend the open enrollment period by at least two months.

12 Nov 2013

Administration's mental health parity rule is part of effort to curb gun violence

The long-awaited final regulation will guarantee most insurance coverage offers access to mental health services on par with physical health coverage.

12 Nov 2013

In states not expanding Medicaid, hospitals face a squeeze as federal funds dry up

The New York Times examines the dilemma for some safety-net hospitals that will not see a drop in the uninsured but will lose federal money that used to help pay for those patients.

12 Nov 2013

More numbers expected this week on October health law enrollment

In related news, The New York Times reports that state and federal exchanges are using "happy talk" to market the new health coverage options available through the online insurance marketplaces, but they rarely mention the penalty. Other news outlets report on developments from Maryland, Oregon and Colorado.

12 Nov 2013

Health Insurance News and Research

Unlike their health law counterparts, young adults can't stay on TRICARE until age 26

Tech companies ready new tools to cash in on health law enrollment

Oversight investigation turns up CMS memo warning of 'high' website security risks

Searching for a fix to the canceled policy problem

People suffering from chronic pain, emotional distress likely to receive long-term opioid therapy

Lawmakers face their own health law reality: Navigating the online exchanges

Challenge of signing up young adults; subsidies key to insurance decisions

Insurers push for workaround that would allow them to directly enroll people

Early enrollment numbers far below administration targets

Zients warned years ago about problems with federal IT; Obama administration turning to insurers' expertise for website difficulties

State highlights: New Hampshire lawmakers contemplate Medicaid expansion; wide variation in indigent care among California counties

Viewpoints: Shinseki's efforts haven't yet solved VA's problems; treating children with mental illness is complicated; abuse of painkillers

Choosing right health insurance could be more difficult for uninsured: Study

Issa issues another subpoena about health law website -- his target: Top White House tech officer

'Crunch time' for Obama on health law; the problems with that apology; young people feeling the sting of higher prices

Health law overview: At the state level, divided government appears to function better than in congress

Proposals likely this week to respond to health law policy cancellations

Administration's mental health parity rule is part of effort to curb gun violence

In states not expanding Medicaid, hospitals face a squeeze as federal funds dry up

More numbers expected this week on October health law enrollment

Bringing real-time analytics to downstream bioprocess monitoring

Designing fluidic architecture for scalable diagnostic platforms

Evaluating new approaches for rare disease genomics

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