The prohibition on pre-existing condition exclusions, which also prohibits denial of health care coverage due to a pre-existing condition, begins January 2014. However, health plans must implement this provision for children under the age of 19, beginning with plan years or policy years beginning on or after September 23, 2010.
The Hill (7/27, Lillis) reports, “The majority of the nation’s seniors have little understanding of what the Democrats’ newly enacted healthcare law actually does, according to poll results released Monday.” According to a poll “sponsored by the National Council on Aging (NCOA), an advocate for seniors…only 17 percent of respondents could answer even half of [...]
An acquaintance of mine who is a physician told this story about her then four-year-old daughter. On the way to preschool, the doctor had left her stethoscope on the car seat, and her little girl picked it up and began playing with it. “Be still, my heart,” thought my friend, “my daughter wants to follow [...]
Walecia Konrad, writing for the New York Times (7/24, B6), asked, “If you are one of the 133 million American grappling with a chronic illness like diabetes, asthma or heart disease, where do you turn for help managing your condition?” According to Konrad, “Your employer may seem like an unlikely choice. … Yet many firms [...]
NEW YORK (Reuters Health 2010-07-22 16:55:21 -0400 ) – Middle-aged and older men who eat fish every day are less likely than infrequent fish eaters to develop a collection of risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and stroke, a new study suggests. Whether a fishy diet itself is the reason for the benefit is not [...]
The New York Times (7/21, Russakoff) “The New Old Age” blog reported, “The population of older Americans is growing faster than ever and living longer than ever, but not as long as in much of Europe and elsewhere in the developed world, according to ‘Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being,’ a report compiled by [...]
The Los Angeles Times (7/21, B1, Helfand) reports on the front page of its Business Section that Leslie Margolin, the “president of Anthem Blue Cross, announced her resignation Tuesday amid stinging criticism of double-digit rate increases that infuriated consumers, lawmakers and government regulators.” Margolin “steered Anthem at a time when its parent company, WellPoint, Inc., [...]
Three Insurance salesman were sitting in a restaurant boasting about each companies service. The first one said, “When one of our insureds died suddenly on Monday, we got the news that evening and were able to process the claim for the wife and had mailed a check on Wednesday evening.” The second one said, “When [...]
ABC World News (7/16, story 6, 2:05, Muir) reported on “hundreds of raids carried out this country” on Friday “in what’s being called the biggest Medicare fraud bust in history. Doctors and nurses billing the American taxpayer for procedures that never happened, and clinics that don’t even exist.” The CBS Evening News (7/16, story 3, [...]