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The Trump administration is proposing steps aimed at improving patients’ access to their own health data, bolstering efforts to bring information including insurance claims, hospital and doctor records to digital devices such as smartphones. Federal health regulators unveiled two major proposed regulations closely watched by health and technology companies, amid a growing flood of health data…

The White House’s plan to lower federal drug payments and stop incentivizing doctors to use the most expensive drugs is a long-overdue, commonsense move to control our nation’s health care costs. And its implementation should be a top priority. Spending for health care is unsustainable, representing about 17 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. In fact, it’s outpacing…

Health policy analysts have long been puzzled that millions of uninsured people snub the government’s offer of free health benefits. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that seven million of the 27.5 million nonelderly people who were uninsured in 2016 were eligible for Medicaid. That’s more than one-fourth of the uninsured population. Another eight million were…

The White House released a report showing that the economic benefits of recent administration and congressional actions on health coverage will total $450 billion over ten years. The report analyzes the economic effects of association health plans, short term limited duration plans, and repeal of the mandate. It finds that, contrary to those who argue that these actions would harm consumers, Americans will benefit significantly from these consumer-friendly policies.

The Senate gave final approval Monday to a replacement plan for the voter-approved full Medicaid expansion after more than an hour of debate — and a last-minute update to the price tag. Health care advocates called the bill — which would forgo $1 billion in federal matching funds — a “bridge to nowhere.” The 22-7…

Hospital prices are the main driver of U.S. healthcare spending inflation, and that trend should direct any policy changes going forward, according to a new study.  For inpatient care, hospital prices grew 42% from 2007 to 2014 while physician prices rose 18%, according to researchers who studied the Health Care Cost Institute’s claims data for…

“Medicare-for-all” is quickly becoming a rallying cry for many Democratic White House hopefuls, but there are growing questions about how to pull off such a dramatic switch to a government-run health care system. The debate over scrapping private insurers has heated up in recent days since Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a supporter of…

Two years ago this month, President Trump promised the American people that he would stop drug companies from “getting away with murder” with their annual ritual of price increases. Since then, his historic actions on drug pricing have produced historic results. One official measure of drug price inflation was actually negative in 2018, for the first time in almost 50 years.

We examined trends in per capita spending for Medicare beneficiaries ages sixty-five and older in the United States in the period 1999–2012 to determine why spending growth has been declining since around 2005. Decomposing spending by condition, we found that half of the spending slowdown was attributable to slower growth in spending for cardiovascular diseases.…

In 2010, CMS established the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program under the ACA. Two years later, the government began fining hospitals with high rates of readmission within 30 days of a hospitalization for pneumonia, heart attack, or heart failure. But a study finds the program may have led to more patient deaths. “Why are policies that…