Author: Scott Welch
The Texas Medical Association (TMA) is now 4-0 on its legal challenges to the Biden administration’s rocky implementation of the No Surprises Act, which bans surprise out-of-network medical bills and outlines processes to resolve payment disputes between providers and payers. In a decision filed Thursday (PDF), U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle largely agreed with the association’s late 2022 ...
Rite Aid is reportedly preparing to file for bankruptcy within a few weeks to help restructure its debt and potentially halt ongoing lawsuits. The move is said to be an attempt to address mass federal and state lawsuits Rite Aid faces over its alleged role in the opioid crisis, The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday. ...
When doctors and health-care providers “prescribed” fruits and vegetables, patients ate more produce, lost weight and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure, according to a new study. “Produce prescriptions” are part of a growing effort in health care to provide food as medicine to potentially prevent or improve chronic health conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease ...
Employers' healthcare costs are anticipated to rise by 8.5% in 2024, according to Aon. The projected increase is nearly twice the 4.5% increase that employers saw from 2022 to 2023. Inflation is a major factor for the increase.
Most state Medicaid programs don’t recognize or pay for services offered by health workers, such as Noneo, who work on tribal lands. That’s despite their work being essentially the same as that of “community health workers” in nontribal communities, a classification many state Medicaid programs cover.
As millions of Medicaid recipients face the potential loss of health coverage for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, state call centers are getting inundated with questions from people needing help. In some cases, federal officials say, it’s taking too long to get answers.
The Business Group on Health released its annual survey of large employers this week and found that 91% are either concerned or very concerned about overall pharmacy cost trend. Alongside that finding, the survey identified that the median spending on pharmacy continues to grow, rising from 21% in 2021 to 24% in 2022.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it is awarding $1.4 billion in grants through its coronavirus initiative to fund the development of “a new generation of tools and technologies to protect against COVID-19 for years to come.” Through the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded ...
The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it has seized over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that criminals had stolen, and charged over 3,000 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country. The Justice Department disclosed the results of a nationwide enforcement action to combat coronavirus fraud, including federal criminal charges against 371 ...
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday the new BA.2.86 lineage of coronavirus may be more capable than older variants in causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received vaccines. CDC said it was too soon to know whether this might cause more severe illness ...