Author: Scott Welch

Several provider groups are slamming recent payment rules offering small price hikes for 2023, as COVID-19 relief in place for more than two years erodes. Groups are clamoring for regulators to boost payments in the proposed 2023 Physician Fee Schedule and Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) rules. Providers say that added pressures of labor shortages, inflation and renewed surges ...

California will start making its own affordable insulin as part of an effort to combat high drug prices for a lifesaving medication that has been made inaccessible for some Americans living with diabetes, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday.

Senate Democrats want to boost taxes on some high earners and use the money to extend the solvency of Medicare, the latest step in the party’s election-year attempt to craft a scaled-back version of the economic package that collapsed last year

As a result, employers must examine their employee benefits package.  Employers and insurance carriers have an opportunity to modernize employee benefits to combat the Great Resignation, the Great Realignment, or Turnover Tsunami as the phenomenon is described.

The spring coronavirus swell that’s turning into the summer coronavirus surge is starting to result in more hospital admissions, although the amount of serious illness is still far less than before widespread vaccination.

The spring coronavirus swell that’s turning into the summer coronavirus surge is starting to result in more hospital admissions, although the amount of serious illness is still far less than before widespread vaccination.

Watch out, pharma—the federal government has its eye on add-on drug patents that can lead to higher prices. In a new effort, the FDA and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) are teaming up to take a close look at patenting procedures. Wednesday, the PTO said it plans to crack down on patenting of “incremental, obvious ...

Hospitals and community and rural health clinics that serve low-income patients say drug manufacturers have threatened their financial stability by dramatically cutting back their participation in a federal drug discount program that saves those health providers millions of dollars a year. Without the drug discounts, the hospitals and clinics say, they are getting close to ...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case has caused a tidal wave of emotion and debate across the nation – especially about health care, and how it can be obtained. The high court ruled that access to pregnancy-termination/abortive care is not a constitutionally protected right. Instead, it is up to ...

When Pat Paulson’s son told her he was feeling anxious and depressed at college, Paulson went through her Blue Cross Blue Shield provider directory and started calling mental health therapists. No providers in the Wisconsin city where her son’s university is located had openings. So she bought a monthly subscription to BetterHelp, a Mountain View, ...