Month: November 2021
The House passed a massive, roughly $2 trillion infrastructure package that will give Medicare the power to narrowly negotiate prices on certain prescription drugs and close the Medicaid coverage gap. The package, called the Build Back Better Act, advanced out of the House late Thursday by a vote of 220 to 213. It now heads to ...
The Biden administration has issued an interim final rule that requires private insurers to report prescription drug costs to the federal government. The interim rule, which also includes a request for comment, is the latest in a series of regulations implementing provisions of the No Surprises Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. Insurers ...
Workers and families with private health insurance would reap savings on prescription drugs from a little-noticed provision in President Joe Biden’s sweeping social agenda bill. It’s meant to break the cycle of annual price increases for widely used medicines. That provision would require drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase prices above the rate of ...
An expert committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines voted 11-to-0 on Friday to recommend Covid-19 booster shot eligibility be thrown open to all adults 18 and older. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices also recommended, by the same vote, that the CDC lower the age for adults who should ...
When Greta Christina fell into a deep depression five years ago, she called up her therapist in San Francisco — someone she’d had a great connection with when she needed therapy in the past. And she was delighted to find out that he was now “in network” with her insurance company, meaning she wouldn’t have ...
Providers could face a 40% cut on average to their Medicare Part B drug reimbursements under legislation that gives Medicare the power to negotiate a small amount of drug prices in Parts B and D, a new analysis finds. The analysis, released Thursday by consulting firm Avalere, examines the effect of a drug pricing negotiation ...
California’s new coronavirus testing laboratory won’t face sanctions for what state officials had called “significant deficiencies” that a whistleblower said threatened the accuracy of its results, authorities said Monday. The Valencia Branch Laboratory was found to have problems with training and record-keeping but authorities couldn’t substantiate reports stemming from a whistleblower that the lab destroyed ...
A federal appeals court has upheld its stay on President Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with at least 100 employees.
An alliance of unions representing 50,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in California, Oregon and six other states called off a strike notice after reaching a tentative labor deal Saturday with the health care network.
Health officials in California want everyone 18 and older to get COVID-19 booster shots ahead of the holiday season. But there is still widespread confusion about who can book an appointment and how. That’s because most online vaccination scheduling systems — including the state’s MyTurn appointment site — still show the specific eligibility categories to ...