Author: Kalup Alexander

Hospital mergers—and the effect of those mergers on medical costs—have caught the eye of California elected officials.

As policymakers gear up to address rising drug costs, a new report highlights just how much prices have gone up in recent years. 

Dale Fountain is an intensely private man. He won’t say where he works. One of his oldest friends can’t say for sure where he lives. His sister knows he was once married but she isn’t in the loop these days — they haven’t spoken in two years.

The House Education and Workforce HELP Subcommittee held a hearing on Tuesday in response to the Trump Administration’s proposed rule on Association Health Plans.

After opposing Republican efforts to expand federal abortion funding prohibitions to Affordable Care Act cost-sharing reduction payments and other measures, Senate Democrats opposed the GOP-led stabilization package with its funding for CSRs and a $30 billion reinsurance pool. Without Democratic support, the measure was dropped this week from the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, the last must-pass legislation of the year. To insurers' dismay, it isn't likely to come back.

Health-insurance premiums are likely to jump right before the November elections, a result of Congress’s omission of federal money to shore up insurance exchanges from its new spending package.

The administration will unveil a slate of proposals soon to address high prescription drug costs in the U.S., President Trump announced Monday. 

Sen. Lamar Alexander and other congressional Republicans are pressing forward with their latest plan to stabilize Obamacare health insurance markets and help provide coverage for patients with high medical costs.

As progressive activists clamor for California to push ahead a sweeping single-payer health plan, a legislative report released Tuesday cautioned that such an overhaul would take years.

The Trump administration said it will seek stiffer penalties against drug dealers — including the death penalty where appropriate under current law — and it wants the number of prescriptions for powerful painkillers to be cut by one-third nationwide as part of a broad effort to combat the opioid crisis.