Public Policy & Medical Economics

Frailty in older Australians is imposing a staggering burden on Australia's health care system and is driving up costs in community aged-care, new research by Flinders University has revealed.... Read more

For nearly a decade, John Baackes has led L.A. Care Health Plan, a publicly run insurer primarily serving low-income Los Angeles County residents on Medi-Cal. It is by far the largest Medi-Cal plan in the state.... Read more

Mercedes Dodge was raised by first-generation immigrant parents from Peru in a modest home in a rural part of southeastern Texas, where there weren't many health care providers. Sometimes they had to travel to Houston, over an hour and a half away, to get basic health care.... Read more

Patients in nearly half the country can't get appointments with specialist teams for weight-loss support and care, including treatment with drugs such as semaglutide. And in nearly one in five local health areas, patients don't have access to a bariatric surgery service, reports Elisabeth Mahase.... Read more

At least 11 of the 17 members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) have conflicts of interest with the likes of Nestle, sugar manufacturer Tate and Lyle, and the world's largest ice cream producer, Unilever, reports Sophie Borland in The BMJ.... Read more

Many patients living in rural areas don't have easy access to specialized or emergency care. When they face conditions like strokes, every minute counts when trying to get them the treatment they need.... Read more

In an analysis of information on 164,170 older adult Medicare beneficiaries who were hospitalized for hip fractures, a similar proportion of Black and white beneficiaries used opioids after they were discharged and returned to the community, but Black beneficiaries consistently received lower doses of the pain medications.... Read more

Every year, about a million people in England and Wales are victims of violent crime.... Read more

Suspicions that U.S. consumers' personal information could be accessed from India led regulators to abruptly bar two large private sector enrollment websites from accessing the Affordable Care Act marketplace in August.... Read more

The proportion of Americans without health insurance remained stable in 2023, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, close to the record low the Biden administration achieved in 2022 through expansions of public programs, including the Affordable Care Act.... Read more

Pregnant women who have limited access to affordable, nutritious, and healthy foods have a higher chance of developing both physical and mental health problems.... Read more

In Canada, prescribing potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs)—drugs whose harms may outweigh their benefits, which may be ineffective, or for which a safer alternative exists—remains very common among the elderly. Moreover, although overall spending on PIMs decreased between 2013 and 2021, seniors' exposure to three categories of PIMs increased during this... Read more

As prescription oral chemotherapies have become a common form of cancer treatment, some patients were paying more than $10,000 a year for medications. A new study finds that efforts to cap prescription drug spending are yielding significant out-of-pocket savings for these patients.... Read more

In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a novel screening tool to measure digital health readiness, which will be critical in addressing barriers to telehealth adoption among diverse patient populations.... Read more

Even as federal aid poured into state budgets in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health leaders warned of a boom-and-bust funding cycle on the horizon as the emergency ended and federal grants sunsetted. Now, that drought has become reality and state governments are slashing budgets that feed local health... Read more