Month: May 2018
The sprawling Alera Group, which has been rapidly expanding its employee benefits business through a series of acquisitions, has added four more brokerages. The deals, which were closed May 1st, expanding the company’s presence in California, the Midwest and the eastern U.S., giving it offices in more than 65 U.S. locations.
Today, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced the conclusion of an enforcement action against Parker Conrad for his alleged role in licensing compliance violations that occurred at Zenefits during his tenure as CEO. Following the filing of an Accusation, Conrad entered into a settlement with the department resulting in the surrender of his insurance license.
The Trump administration hit back on Monday against critics of President Trump’s plan to reduce prescription drug prices, saying his ideas would be far more effective than remedies championed by Democrats.
The Trump administration's spring 2018 unified agenda, released on Wednesday, offered a preview into various agencies' regulatory and deregulatory plans for the near future. Policy changes outlined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) include reduced paperwork burdens for hospitals, greater flexibility for non-ACA-compliant plans, and additional tactics to fight the opioid epidemic, all of which have been previously addressed by the Trump administration.
The California Rx Card and Nevada Drug Card prescription drug assistance programs have saved residents of the two states more than $635 million since the discount cards were launched in 2007 and 2008, through December 31, 2017.
Gov. Jerry Brown opted not to include major long-term investments in public health insurance programs in his budget revision on Friday, citing a preference for one-time spending measures.
President Trump’s goal of expanding short-term health plans will not harm the insurance marketplace, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, has said he’s abandoning efforts to push a bipartisan bill meant to stabilize the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges, putting the blame on Democrats’ resistance to making changes to the law. With no congressional action likely this far into an election year, exchange insurers are requesting some eye-popping hikes for 2019 premiums.
As some insurers angle for hefty premium hikes and concerns grow that more Americans will wind up uninsured, the federal health law is likely — once again — to play big in both parties’ strategies for the contentious 2018 election.
A new research letter reports that doctors who received free meals and other kinds of payments from pharmaceutical companies tended to prescribe more opioid painkillers to their patients over the course of a year. Meanwhile, doctors who didn't get such freebies cut back on their opioid prescriptions.