Author: Scott Welch
Lawmakers bashed the business practices of pharmacy benefit managers during a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing Tuesday. When they were asked repeatedly about steering patients, increased drug prices and pharmacy closures, the company executives largely refuted claims thrown at them. Lawmakers were overwhelmingly frustrated with the perceived non-answers given and at one point reminded the ...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released new data on risk adjustment payments for 2023. The agency said (PDF) insurers participating on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges will pay $10.3 billion as part of the risk adjustment program. Risk adjustment state transfers as a percent of premiums declined from 2022, according to the report. ...
What weighs most heavily on older adults’ minds when it comes to health care? The cost of services and therapies, and their ability to pay. “It’s on our minds a whole lot because of our age and because everything keeps getting more expensive,” said Connie Colyer, 68, of Pleasureville, Kentucky. She’s a retired forklift operator who ...
The underlying medical cost trend for employers' group health coverage could stay high in 2025, according to PwC analysts. The analysts are predicting that the medical cost trend will be 8%.
The IRS issued its highly anticipated final regulations for required minimum distributions on July 19, 2024. These regulations incorporate rules from both the Secure and Secure 2.0 acts.
President Biden — who was propelled into office in no small part by his health care agenda — realized Democrats' decades-long dream of allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, and came closer to achieving his party's equally elusive goal of universal health coverage than any other Democratic president before him.
Expensive specialty drugs and ordinary severe claims are pushing the cost of protecting a self-funded employer health plan against catastrophic risk higher.
The government is giving away money! So say ads on a variety of social media platforms. Consumers, the ads claim, can qualify for $1,400 or even $6,400 a month to use on groceries, rent, medical expenses, and other bills. Some mention no-cost health insurance coverage. But that’s not the whole story. And here’s the spoiler — no one ...
Pharmacist Mark Mikhael has lost 50 pounds over the past 12 months. He no longer has diabetes and finds himself “at my ideal body weight,” with his cholesterol below 200 for the first time in 20 years. “I feel fantastic,” he said. Like millions of others, Mikhael credits the new class of weight loss drugs. ...
Pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) are steering patients toward more expensive drugs and limiting where they can get them, according to a new report from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. The report, viewed by the Wall Street Journal, followed a 32-month investigation by the committee ahead of a hearing on PBMs involving executives from the nation’s largest ...