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Compliance

This section focuses on health care compliance and regulations – both national and state – including the ACA. It includes changes in health care law, regulation, and court decisions and their impact on health insurance professionals, employers, and individuals.

Administration Is Seeking Ways to Keep Prescription Drugs Affordable

The Obama administration began building a political case Friday for government actions to protect people against high pharmaceutical costs, saying millions of Americans were unable to afford lifesaving prescription drugs. “As costs go up, so does everyone’s anxiety about their continued access to their prescription medicine,” said Andrew M. Slavitt, the acting administrator of the ...

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No Love for Obamacare, but Most in U.S. See Government Role for Health Care

They may have no love for Obamacare, but a new poll shows that more than half of Americans now think that it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that all Americans have health insurance overage. A new Gallup poll finds that more than half of Americans agreed with that sentiment, up six ...

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Senate Sets Up ObamaCare Repeal Bill

The Senate on Thursday fast-tracked a House-passed effort to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used a procedural move to let the House bill skip over the Senate’s committee process and be placed directly on the Senate calendar, where it could be teed up for action on the ...

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UnitedHealth’s Threat To Leave Exchanges Not Expected To Mean Much in California

UnitedHealth Group’s announcement this week that it may pull out of Affordable Care Act exchanges is not expected to have much of an impact on Covered California, experts said, but the move could have serious repercussions in other exchanges. Although the for-profit company hasn’t been a major player in most exchanges and is a late-comer ...

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Biggest Insurer Threatens to Abandon Health Law

The biggest U.S. health insurer said it has suffered major losses on policies sold on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges and will consider withdrawing from them, adding to worries about the future of the marketplaces at the heart of the Obama administration’s signature health law. The disclosure by UnitedHealth Group Inc., UNH 0.92 % which ...

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Lawmakers Press Obama for Meeting on ObamaCare Tax

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is requesting a meeting with President Obama to discuss repealing ObamaCare’s “Cadillac Tax.” The 40 percent tax on high-cost health insurance plans, set to take effect in 2018, was intended to help restrain healthcare costs, but it has drawn opposition from some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worried ...

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Covered California Touts Early Enrollment, But There’s A Cloud on the Horizon

Covered California has signed up more than 34,000 new individuals for health benefits since open enrollment started Nov. 1, exchange officials said Thursday. That’s about 2,000 a day and “very strong enrollment” for so early in the sign-up period that extends through Jan. 31, said executive director Peter Lee. But there’s a cloud on the ...

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Pharma’s Bizarre Pricing Shrug

The drug industry is in denial about the seriousness of its pricing problem. Throughout this autumn, as the issue of drug pricing erupted from a long-simmering controversy into a full-blown headache, pretty much every CEO of note in biotech and pharma had to address the subject, and their tone was largely defensive and dismissive. There were vague promises of moderation, ...

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New California Color is Gray, Not Gold as ‘Aging Tsunami” Arrives

From the beach party movies of the 1960s to the hippies of the 1970s and Silicon Valley’s baby billionaires today, California has long projected a youthful ambiance. That’s about to change in a big way. The aging of California’s huge post-World War II baby-boom generation, combined with plummeting birth and immigration rates, means the Golden ...

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Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless

Obama administration officials, urging people to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, have trumpeted the low premiums available on the law’s new marketplaces. But for many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: ...

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