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The Leapfrog Group Announces Annual Top Hospitals List - Recognizes Hospitals for Their Achievement in Providing the Highest Quality Care in America

 Sixty-five hospitals have earned The Leapfrog Group’s annual “Top Hospital” designation, equaling 2010’s record-setting total. The “Top Hospital” designation, which is the most competitive national hospital quality award in the country, recognizes hospitals that deliver the highest quality care by p...

What charges are you supposed to pay if you have a PPO, POS. or an HMO type of insurance plan? Deductibles and copays, right? If you receive a bill from a non participating provider, you may be asked to pay more than your fair share of the bill. In some situations you may not even know you were receiving services from a non participating provider, or even had a chance to choose a provider, which is often the case when the doctor or hospital you did choose, uses the...

If nonprofit hospitals spend far less money on providing charity care for the poor and uninsured than the value of their federal, state and local tax exemptions, do they deserve those exemptions? What about if they turn away indigent patients or hound them with aggressive collection practices?

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Doctors and the fee-for-service system are at the center of the health care debate. This article defines how insurance was created in 1929. A very simple concept that has been controversial since inception. Well worth reading this from the NY Times.

www.nytimes.com

Tax-exempt hospitals do not have to pay federal income taxes. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the value of these tax breaks at more than $6 billion a year.

Before 1969, the Internal Revenue Service required hospitalsto provide charity care to qualify for tax-exempt status. Since then,the agency has not specifically required charity care, but communitiesmust benefit in other ways.

Consumer groups and Patient Advocates can̵...

As if access to healthcare wasn't already overwhelming and increasingly limited, new tactics will be utilized by hospitals beforeyou even walk through the door. Why bother obtaining and paying for a high deductible policy which you can't afford, only to discover that healthcare is still out of your reach?

Access to healthcare will be left to those who are still employed and who also work for larg...

Recently the AMA filed class action lawsuits against Aetna, Cigna and Welpoint for underpaying out of network claims. The AMA was also recently awarded $350m against United Healthcare for the same allegations.

In recent years some of these same industry giants lost litigation related to denying claims for medical necessity. In those class-action lawsuits, physicians a...

As health-care costs continue to soar, millions of confused consumers are paying medical bills they don't actually owe. Typically this occurs when an insurance plan covers less than what a doctor, hospital, or lab service wants to be paid. The health-care provider demands the balance from the patient. Uncertain and fearing the calls of a debt collector, the patient pays up.

Hospital comparisons - this is a great site to compare hospitals within any radius. HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a national, standardized survey of hospital patients. HCAHPS (pronounced "H-caps") was created to publicly report the patient's perspective of hospital care. The survey asks a random s...

Critical illness coverage seen as small price to pay for peace of mind in tough times With tightened budgets a prevalent reality, employers are struggling to do more with less, including finding ways to offer the best value employee benefits packages. The increasing shift toward employees shouldering more costs, particularly for health insurance, can unfortunately leave many working Americans who face serious illnesses falling through financial c...