Month: December 2021
Faced with rising coronavirus cases and growing concerns about the Omicron variant, California is ordering a statewide mask mandate for indoor public spaces to go into effect on Wednesday.
Word & Brown General Agency, an Orange-based provider of insurance and health benefit brokers with more than 500 employees, named current President Jessica Word as its new chief executive.
Employer health insurance costs spiked in 2021, and it remains unclear if this is a one-off course correction or the beginning of a new trend, according to a new Mercer survey.
The head of a Senate panel that oversees Medicare says the Biden administration should use its legal authority to cut back a hefty premium increase soon hitting millions of enrollees, as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers call for action amid worries over rising inflation.
Two of the largest lobbying groups representing physicians and hospitals filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a Biden administration decision on how to implement the law shielding patients from most surprise medical bills. The lawsuit from the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association does not seek to halt the law from going into effect in January. Instead, ...
Omicron appears to cause less severe illness than earlier variants of the coronavirus but is more resistant to the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine widely used in South Africa, according to the first major private study since omicron was first detected last month. The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 ...
Almost one-third of Americans skipped necessary medical care in the past three months because they could not afford it, according to a poll released Tuesday. The survey from the West Health Policy Center and Gallup found that 30 percent of participants said they opted out of health care due to the cost — a percentage that tripled from ...
The Senate passed legislation late Thursday that delays nearly 10% in Medicare cuts set to take effect next year, giving providers a major boost. The Senate passed the bill by 59 to 35 on Thursday, sending the legislation to President Biden after a successful House vote earlier this week. The bill included a provision to ...
For years, drugmakers have targeted “weaknesses” in the U.S. healthcare system to reap dividends on older meds, The House Oversight Committee said Friday. The “outrageous prices” and “anticompetitive conduct” that dictate the market make a strong case for the passing of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would allow Medicare to petition for ...
Influenza virus detections are rising in the U.S., according to health officials. In a weekly influenza surveillance report ending on Dec. 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that while influenza activity remains low nationally, it continues to increase. “The number of influenza viruses detected by clinical and public health labs has increased in recent ...