Medicare

Around this time last year, a quarter of Missouri nursing homes hadn’t been inspected in at least two years. Now the number is closer to 3%, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

Low-income people who are disabled or over 65 — or both — qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. In 2022, that included 203,000 people in Missouri and 75,000 in Kansas. A bipartisan group of lawmakers agree: the two insurance programs are failing the country's most vulnerable patients.

Missouri will now extend Medicaid benefits for new mothers from 60 days to a full year postpartum. Supporters of the new law say that without the extension some health problems could go untreated. Plus: There is only one facility in Kansas that deals with runaway foster kids. But critics of the program say it is only making the situation worse.

One Kansas hospital was planning to start welcoming 100 nurses from the Philippines this fall. But a lengthy backlog in visa applications has put that on hold, possibly for a year or longer. Plus: A handful of states have not adopted the federal government’s option to extend postpartum care coverage for mothers on Medicaid.

Homelessness in urban areas is often visible on city sidewalks or public encampments. In rural Kansas and Missouri, unhoused people often go unseen — and unhelped. Plus, Missourians voted to expand Medicaid in 2020, making government-provided health insurance available to tens of thousands of low-income residents. But the change could also mean more layers of bureaucracy for hospitals.

Medical records show Dr. Scott Taggart Roethle has been sanctioned in at least 10 states for prescribing medications via telemedicine to patients with whom he did not have a physician-patient relationship.

Medicare is cutting payments to 786 hospitals with the highest infection and complication rates. The list includes a third of the hospitals proclaimed as the nation's "best" in one prominent ranking.

Segment 1: Even though debtors prisons were outlawed in 1983, the threat of jail is being used to pursue unpaid medical bills.Debt collectors in many…

A federal audit and a whistleblower lawsuit allege that Medicare Advantage plans from the St. Louis-based Essence Group Holdings Corp. have significantly overcharged taxpayers.

The federal government wants to deploy several new tools for catching insurers that have overcharged Medicare $30 billion in the past three years alone. But the insurance industry is balking.

Two Johnson County chiropractors accused by the federal government of defrauding Medicare have settled the case for $350,000.The payment ends a civil…

Allegations of financial fraud and stolen hospital records have surfaced in an increasingly nasty legal battle over the fate of Hillsboro Community…