Author: Kalup Alexander
HealthCare.gov signup activity continued to improve during the third week of the open enrollment period for individual major medical coverage that starts Jan. 1, 2019. Managers of the Affordable Care Act public exchange enrollment and administration system report that 748,244 households selected plans during the third week of the 2019 open enrollment period, which ended Nov. 17.
Fewer people are signing up for ObamaCare plans this year compared to a similar period last year, according to data released Wednesday by the Trump administration.
In order to capitalize on the opioid crisis, a small company that sells a version of naloxone, a decades-old drug that is widely used to reverse the effect of opioid and heroin overdoses, raised the price of its product by more than 600 percent between 2014 and 2017, which cost the federal government more than $142 million, according to a lengthy report from a Senate subcommittee.
Democrats will scrutinize the Trump administration’s decision not to defend Obamacare in federal court, when Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, a leading Democrat said on Monday.
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones today issued a notice to insurers requesting they agree to expediting claims handling for Camp and Woolsey wildfire survivors in order to help them begin the recovery and rebuilding process more quickly.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), who is slated to be the next chairman of a House committee overseeing drug prices, said Wednesday that his top priorities on the issue are allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and speeding the approval of cheaper generic drugs.
Express Scripts Holding Co. and other pharmacy-benefit managers make money by negotiating drug prices on behalf of health-plan providers. The list prices that pharmaceutical companies set for their drugs diverge wildly from their real cost, and PBMs widen and feast on the gap, which helps make them some of the principal beneficiaries of America’s byzantine pricing system.
Supporters of the nation’s health law condemn them. A few states, including California and New York, have banned them. Other states limit them.
Access to high-quality healthcare was a recurring theme last week at the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions’ annual conference in Washington, D.C.
The lower premiums in urban areas were partially connected to more competition among plans and providers. Having more plans also means they can spread the financial risk rather than having one or two payers shoulder all of it, leading to lower premiums.