Month: March 2018
After opposing Republican efforts to expand federal abortion funding prohibitions to Affordable Care Act cost-sharing reduction payments and other measures, Senate Democrats opposed the GOP-led stabilization package with its funding for CSRs and a $30 billion reinsurance pool. Without Democratic support, the measure was dropped this week from the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, the last must-pass legislation of the year. To insurers' dismay, it isn't likely to come back.
Health-insurance premiums are likely to jump right before the November elections, a result of Congress’s omission of federal money to shore up insurance exchanges from its new spending package.
The administration will unveil a slate of proposals soon to address high prescription drug costs in the U.S., President Trump announced Monday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander and other congressional Republicans are pressing forward with their latest plan to stabilize Obamacare health insurance markets and help provide coverage for patients with high medical costs.
As progressive activists clamor for California to push ahead a sweeping single-payer health plan, a legislative report released Tuesday cautioned that such an overhaul would take years.
The Trump administration said it will seek stiffer penalties against drug dealers — including the death penalty where appropriate under current law — and it wants the number of prescriptions for powerful painkillers to be cut by one-third nationwide as part of a broad effort to combat the opioid crisis.
A leading liberal health-care advocacy group is warning against a proposal to fund ObamaCare payments, saying the move would actually harm consumers. The group, Families USA, is opposing a plan released on Wednesday from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in large part because the proposal would fund ObamaCare payments known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs).
Coupons, which are used to get steep discounts, typically come in the form of cards that consumers get in drug ads or from doctors. Coupons help drug companies sell more products, but studies show coupons also raise health care costs because they encourage people to buy more expensive drugs, even when cheaper generics are available. Insurance companies, therefore, don’t think much of coupons.
Health insurer Cigna is buying the nation’s biggest pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, the latest in a string of proposed tie-ups as health care’s bill payers attempt to get a grip on rising costs.
The practice of charging a copay that is higher than the full cost of a drug is called a “clawback” because the middlemen that handle drug claims for insurance companies essentially “claw back” the extra dollars from the pharmacy.