Author: Scott Welch
The U.S. Justice Department has dismissed its own appeal challenging UnitedHealth Group’s (UNH.N) nearly $8 billion acquisition last year of Change Healthcare, a court filing showed. The healthcare deal was seen as a blow to the Biden administration’s tougher enforcement of antitrust issues. The Justice Department had argued the deal would give UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health ...
Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose administration is struggling to contain a worsening homelessness crisis despite record spending, is trying something bold: tapping federal health care funding to cover rent for homeless people and those at risk of losing their housing. States are barred from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay directly for rent, but California’s governor is ...
The Biden administration’s decision to end the covid-19 public health emergency in May will institute sweeping changes across the health care system that go far beyond many people having to pay more for covid tests. In response to the pandemic, the federal government in 2020 suspended many of its rules on how care is delivered. That transformed ...
A collection of nearly 30 provider groups wants the Biden administration to combine fee-for-service and prospective payments to primary care doctors to bolster the workforce. The groups wrote a letter to officials with the (PDF) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the need for such a hybrid payment model. The missive comes as CMS has ...
California has hit another major milestone in its fight against COVID-19, with all of the state’s residents now living in areas with a “low” community transmission level for the first time since last fall. This puts California’s 58 counties in line with approximately 93% of others across the U.S. that meet the Centers for Disease Control ...
The Biden administration is set to disband the White House COVID-19 response team in May after the public health emergency ends. The team was created by the Trump administration in February 2020 and played a prominent role in Trump’s final and Biden’s first years as president, particularly under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership. However, as the pandemic fades from the headlines, the team is set ...
“How’s the knee?” one bowler asked another across the lanes. Their conversation in a Super Bowl ad focused on a Biden administration proposal that one bowler warned another would “cut Medicare Advantage.” “Somebody in Washington is smarter than that,” the friend responded, before a narrator urged viewers to call the White House to voice their displeasure. The ...
Telehealth mental health startup Cerebral — after receiving a formal request from the federal government — admitted to sharing the private health information of more than 3.1 million patients in the United States with several advertisers and social media platforms. According to the company’s “Notice of HIPAA Privacy Breach,” the data disclosed “varied depending on what actions individuals took ...
Feeling dissatisfied and lonely? You might want to snag tickets to a few of your favorite team’s games. New research connects viewing live sporting events with higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of loneliness – and researchers say live sporting events could be used to improve public health. The study, published in Frontiers ...
That morning cup of coffee might provide more benefits than just a quick energy boost. New research suggests that consuming higher levels of caffeine could help curb body fat and reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Researchers at the University of Bristol, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Imperial College in London conducted the study, which was ...