Month: August 2023
The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled the first 10 prescription drugs that will be subject to price negotiations between manufacturers and Medicare, kicking off a controversial process that aims to make costly medications more affordable for older Americans.
Blue Shield of California shocked a lot of people when it announced it was going to drop CVS Health (CVS) as its main pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) and instead go with companies like Amazon Pharmacy (AMZN) and Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs.
Many steps remain before older adults see the benefit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ upcoming talks with drugmakers.
If Gov. Gavin Newsom was hoping amendments introduced to his mental health overhaul last week would sufficiently appease critics, Tuesday’s back-to-back committee hearings only revealed how much further he has to go to reach a compromise. The big idea: Newsom wants counties to prioritize behavioral health spending on homeless individuals who have serious mental illness or addiction ...
The national Covid emergency has ended, but a new strain of the coronavirus, called EG.5 or “Eris,” is rapidly circulating worldwide. “EG.5 is actually just a subvariant of omicron,” says Dr. Payal Patel, infectious diseases physician at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City. “We are seeing a rise in this subvariant worldwide. We’re seeing it in the U.S. ...
Millions of people are being pushed off state Medicaid rolls as the U.S. dismantles one of the last major Covid-era safety nets, and congressional Democrats and health advocates want the Biden administration to do more to ensure people are protected. Nationwide, nearly 5.5 million people have been purged from state Medicaid rolls across 45 states and the ...
The Texas Medical Association (TMA) is now 4-0 on its legal challenges to the Biden administration’s rocky implementation of the No Surprises Act, which bans surprise out-of-network medical bills and outlines processes to resolve payment disputes between providers and payers. In a decision filed Thursday (PDF), U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle largely agreed with the association’s late 2022 ...
Rite Aid is reportedly preparing to file for bankruptcy within a few weeks to help restructure its debt and potentially halt ongoing lawsuits. The move is said to be an attempt to address mass federal and state lawsuits Rite Aid faces over its alleged role in the opioid crisis, The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday. ...
When doctors and health-care providers “prescribed” fruits and vegetables, patients ate more produce, lost weight and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure, according to a new study. “Produce prescriptions” are part of a growing effort in health care to provide food as medicine to potentially prevent or improve chronic health conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease ...
Employers' healthcare costs are anticipated to rise by 8.5% in 2024, according to Aon. The projected increase is nearly twice the 4.5% increase that employers saw from 2022 to 2023. Inflation is a major factor for the increase.