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Denied

Health insurers selling their services through Healthcare.gov denied nearly one-fifth of claims in 2017. And only a tiny fraction of the affected consumers—less than one-half of one percent—appealed the decisions.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found Google Translate, Google’s AI-based app, can help non-English speaking patients and their providers. However, it's not perfect, according to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

insurance

Nearly 30 million individuals of all ages in the U.S. were uninsured during the first nine months of 2018. This figure represents a little over 9 percent of the population, and it’s similar to the uncovered headcount from 2017. Still, it’s a notable improvement from 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was nascent and 19 million more people lacked coverage.

A new machine learning-based system, detailed in the journal Frontiers in Neurology, screens children for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in a quick and more cost-efficient way. The system was developed by researchers at the University of Southern California, Queen’s University in Ontario and Duke University, and will be accessible to children in more remote areas of the globe. 

Lady_Justice

Catch up on all things fraud and ethics in the healthcare industry with HealthExec’s weekly watchdog report.

As more of the Democratic party comes on board with the idea of Medicare for all, a new bill was introduced in the House this week to make universal healthcare a reality. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) introduced the bill on Feb. 27. The bill has more than 100 co-sponsors.

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The approval, made as part of a special FDA pilot program, took just 50 days.