WASHINGTON — Medicaid, long the stepchild of government health care programs, is finally coming into its own. The federal-state program for low-income people has been scarcely debated in the turbulent presidential election, but it faces real consequences depending on who wins the White House in the Nov. 8 vote. Under President Barack Obama, Medicaid has [...]
WASHINGTON — A bold experiment is giving some patients a chance at cutting years off their wait for a kidney transplant if they agree to a drastic-sounding option — getting an organ almost sure to infect them with hepatitis C. Betting on new medications that promise to cure hepatitis C, two leading transplant centers aim [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The vast majority of U.S. students still lack a solid grasp of science despite some modest gains by fourth and eighth graders, especially girls and minorities. The problem is particularly acute among the nation’s high school seniors. The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card, released Thursday [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That’s sure to stoke another “Obamacare” controversy days before a presidential election. Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration’s “18F” program to create its own version of a high-tech startup for government digital projects has foundered since its launch in 2014, losing nearly $32 million as its staff spent most of its time on unbillable work, according to a new inspector general report. The comparisons to some Silicon [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Telling little fibs leads down a slippery slope to bigger lies — and our brains adapt to escalating dishonesty, which makes deceit easier, a new study shows. Neuroscientists at the University College London’s Affective Brain Lab put 80 people in scenarios where they could repeatedly lie and get paid more based on [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — One group of Americans will likely see huge changes to their tax bills after this year’s presidential election: the wealthiest 1 percent. They will see a big tax increase if Hillary Clinton wins, or enjoy a huge tax cut if Donald Trump wins. For everyone else? Both candidates are proposing very small [...]
WASHINGTON — First-time buyers may be entering the U.S. home market in greater numbers than industry watchers had assumed. Nearly half of sales in the past year went to people who were buying their first home, according to a survey released by the real estate firm Zillow. That’s a much higher proportion of the market [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Even if your daughters don’t pay much attention to politics, they’d be hard-pressed to have missed Donald Trump’s attack of a former Miss Universe’s weight or comments about a 400-pound hacker. It resonated with a 15-year-old who said last week the words damage girls’ body image and asked Hillary Clinton how to [...]
WASHINGTON — Worried that insurers bailing out of the health law’s markets may prompt their customers to drop out, too, the Obama administration plans to steer affected policyholders to remaining insurance companies. But those consumers could get an unwelcome surprise if their new government-recommended plan isn’t what they’re used to. The backstop was outlined in [...]