Author: Scott Welch
A growing number of hospitals are outsourcing often-unprofitable outpatient services for their poorest patients by setting up independent, nonprofit organizations to provide primary care. Medicare and Medicaid pay these clinics, known as federally qualified health center look-alikes, significantly more than they would if the sites were owned by hospitals. Like the nearly 1,400 federally qualified health ...
Medicare is poised to renegotiate the prices of some of its most expensive drugs through a historic expansion of its power, which could reduce costs for many seniors as well as federal spending on its prescription drug plan. The changes are tucked inside a massive spending-and-tax bill in Congress that includes $433 billion in investments ...
Aetna will enter the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) exchanges in four more states, bringing its total footprint to 12 states, the insurer announced late last week. The CVS Health subsidiary will begin offering plans in California, Delaware, Illinois and New Jersey for the 2023 plan year. Aetna already offered plans in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, ...
California employers should take note of two significant bills recently passed by the state Legislature that are now awaiting likely approval by Governor Newsom. The first, Senate Bill 1162 (SB 1162), would further expand California’s already progressive requirements for employers regarding pay transparency and data reporting. The second, Assembly Bill 152 (AB 152), is expected ...
In the closing days of the legislative session, strong opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce and allied groups, including many local chambers of commerce, prevented the passage of a number of harmful proposals. The CalChamber-opposed bills stopped include the following: • SB 260 (Wiener; D-San Francisco) Increased Regulatory Burden. Imposes a mandatory climate tracking, auditing, and cap on climate ...
The Trump administration issued rules and legal guidance that made it more difficult for unions to organize workers, and for workers to bring complaints and lawsuits against employers for alleged labor-law violations. That’s changing now that Democrats are in the White House, and Democratic appointees control the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board. For ...
As the promotional push to get people vaccinated with one of the updated, bivalent Covid vaccines heats up, federal health authorities are urging Americans to consider getting their Covid shot and their flu shot at the same time. And with concern about a fall wave of Covid paramount in this effort, the messaging is stressing ...
President Joe Biden is launching a new initiative to encourage biotech production and research in the U.S., the latest move by the White House to boost domestic industry. Biden on Monday signed an executive order implementing the initiative and later, in remarks at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, will address how biotech can help fight ...
President Joe Biden on Monday urged Americans to come together for a new “national purpose” — his administration’s effort to end cancer “as we know it.” At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Biden channeled JFK’s famed moonshot speech 60 years ago, likening the space race to his own effort and hoping it, too, would ...
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a nation-leading measure giving more than a half-million fast food workers more power and protections, despite the objections of restaurant owners who warned it would drive up consumers’ costs.