Month: January 2024
Health care affordability is worsening in California, with health care costs rising significantly faster than household income, and more than half of the state’s residents saying they or a family member skipped or delayed care in the past year because of cost.
When Kristy Uddin, 49, went in for her annual mammogram last year, she assumed she would not incur a bill because the test is one of the many preventive measures guaranteed to be free to patients under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Pharmaceutical companies are due to receive by Thursday the U.S. government's opening proposal for what are expected to be significant discounts on 10 of its high-cost medicines, an important step in the Medicare health program's first ever price negotiations.
The CEOs of Merck and Johnson & Johnson have voluntarily agreed to testify at an upcoming Senate hearing on high drug prices in the U.S., Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Friday, as lawmakers ramp up efforts to rein in health-care costs for Americans.
The expected winter wave of respiratory viruses in California is steadily receding, with hospital admissions for COVID-19 and influenza falling back to levels seen before Christmas, according to figures reported by the state Friday. Health facilities and the public have fared much better this winter compared with the previous three seasons of the pandemic. Yet amid ...
As Amazon builds out its healthcare business and expands its reach into hybrid primary care, pharmacy operations and virtual care, there are promising opportunities to integrate these services to offer a better healthcare experience. A year after its big-ticket acquisition of One Medical, Amazon’s pharmacy business is piloting a program to provide pharmacy consultations to One ...
The ban on surprise medical bills protected patients from more than 10 million claims for out-of-network services in the first nine months of 2023, according to new estimates by health insurer groups. But the process for settling billing disputes is still in disarray. Why it matters: AHIP and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said more than 670,000 ...
The resources serve as a “step forward” as the agency looks to propose enforceable standards, HHS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm said in a statement.
Two large insurers based in Oakland, Calif., are implementing tougher security measures in response to rising crime in the city’s downtown, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Jan. 26. Kaiser Permanente is recommending employees in downtown Oakland stay in their office buildings during lunch, according to a memo obtained by Fox affiliate KTVU. The memo was prompted by street robberies ...
More than 21.3 million people will be enrolled in an Affordable Care Act during this year’s open enrollment period, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today. Almost five million more people have signed up for a plan this year than last year, with open enrollment set to continue through the end of January ...