Month: October 2023

Nearly a decade after Nevada implemented Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, the results are in — the state’s uninsured rate has plummeted, but challenges still plague the state’s health care ecosystem.

There’s a health care crisis here in Nevada. Health care providers and treatment centers are dealing with crippling staff shortages, with Nevada ranking 45th in the nation for the number of active physicians per 100,000 residents, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The average employer-sponsored health insurance premium for U.S. families rose 7% to almost $24,000 this year, according to an annual KFF survey of more than 2,000 U.S. companies, compared with a 1% increase last year. Premiums for individual employer coverage rose at the same rate.

The leadership turmoil in the U.S. House of Representatives has clouded the outlook for passing health care legislation this year. However, there’s also a lot of momentum in Congress behind the health policy work that already has been done, so some health care reforms “have a chance of hitching a ride on a big catch-all bill at the end of the year.

Fewer than 26% of US households still have someone working remotely at least one day a week, a sharp decline from the early 2021 peak of 37%, according to the two latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys. Only seven states plus Washington, DC, have a remote-work rate above 33%.

Cigna has announced the expansion of its Medicare Advantage (MA) presence to Nevada. The health insurance giant said it would launch the MA plan in two Las Vegas-area counties with a $0 premium plan. Cigna already offers Medicare Supplement plans and stand-alone prescription drug plans throughout the state. The plan will initially be available to ...

The U.S. government has halted some efforts to collect an estimated $62 billion in past-due pandemic loans made to small businesses, concluding that aggressive attempts to recover the money — a portion of which may have been lost to fraud — could cost more than simply writing off the debt. The Small Business Administration, which ...

Abby Madore covers a lot of ground each day at work. A staffer at a community health center in Carson City, Madore spends her days helping low-income residents understand their health insurance options, including Medicaid. Her phone is always ringing, she said, as she fields calls from clients who dial in from the state’s remote ...

Insurers and some employers contend the Biden administration’s recent proposal to bolster coverage of mental and behavioral care could actually backfire and make it more difficult for patients to access quality care. The big picture: The health care payers are urging the administration to drop major features of its plan, including a new formula to determine whether insurers ...

The pharmacy chain, once the largest in the United States, detailed a batch of store closures in a bankruptcy court filing.