Search results for

Hospice policies that reject patients on the grounds that no one's at home to care for them, while increasingly rare, do still exist around the country. But for many families, that's just not an option.

Without rules that spell out which health plan takes the lead, a young person who lives out of state and is covered by his parents' plan and a college health plan might run into trouble trying to get in-network care when far from hometown.

Some of the priciest markets for insurance include rural counties in Georgia and the areas around ski resorts in Colorado. While many people in these places will receive government subsidies to help pay for premiums, the portion that they pay will still be higher than what they would have to foot elsewhere.

The insurance pool for people with expensive pre-existing conditions will stay open until the end of March, after another extension by the federal government. Starting this year, the Affordable Care Act bars insurers from rejecting people because of health problems, but they may need more time than originally thought to sign up for coverage.

Health plans of all kinds typically cover rehabilitative services, such as physical therapy to help people after an accident or illness. But before the Affordable Care Act passed, coverage of similar services to help people learn or maintain functional skills, rather than regain them, was often excluded.

State insurance regulators learned recently that an electronic system most insurers will use to submit their policies for state and federal approvals won't be ready for testing next month. The unexpected problem could delay work on the exchanges by three months.

Despite a Justice Department decision giving same-sex married couples equal recognition in federal courthouses, prisons and other programs, inconsistency in the treatment of same-sex married couples under the health law remains. States still make their own decisions.

As the long, slow demise of company-sponsored retiree health insurance continues, some firms are contracting with Medicare exchanges to try to ease the transition for their former employees.

What sets these bargain markets apart? They tend to have robust competition among hospitals and doctors, allowing insurers to wrangle lower rates. Many of the best deals are to be had in Minnesota, where managed care has long held prices in check.

Under the federal health law and 2006 regulations, insurers can't deny medical coverage for an individual's injuries because they resulted from a medical condition such as depression, even if it wasn't diagnosed before the injury.