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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.

Medicare Surprise: Drug Plan Prices Touted During Open Enrollment Can Rise Within a Month

Something strange happened between the time Linda Griffith signed up for a new Medicare prescription drug plan during last fall’s enrollment period and when she tried to fill her first prescription in January. She picked a Humana drug plan for its low prices, with help from her longtime insurance agent and Medicare’s Plan Finder, an ...

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WTW: A Look At Employers’ Strategies For Addressing Affordability

Most employers are putting a focus on managing healthcare costs coming out of the pandemic, a new survey shows. Analysts at WTW polled 636 employers representing 10 million workers and found that 94% are naming healthcare costs a top priority over the next two years. A close second was enhancing mental health benefits, with 87% calling it ...

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Worker Pay and Benefits Grow at Record Pace, Pressuring Inflation

Compensation for American workers increased rapidly in the first quarter, as a tight labor market put more money in workers’ pockets while keeping inflation under control. Without adjusting for seasonality, business and government employers spent 4.5 percent more on worker costs in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago, according to ...

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Amid Inflation, IRS Boosts Health Savings Account Contribution Limits In 2023 For Individuals, Family Plans

In 2023, you can save up to $3,850 with an individual health insurance plan, up from $3,650 in 2022, the IRS announced Friday. And you can soon contribute up to $7,750 with a family plan, boosted from $7,300.

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Medicare At 60 Would Have Harmful Unintended Consequences

In an era of rising inflation and trillion-dollar deficits, there appears to be growing bipartisan support for fiscal restraint. President Biden’s recent budget proposal featured more than $1 trillion in deficit-reducing policies. And his administration is now promising that the proposals once comprising the president’s Build Back Better agenda will be, at worst, deficit neutral. But despite ...

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A Reduction In Medicare Part B Premiums Remains In Play. Here’s Where Things Stand

For Medicare beneficiaries wondering whether their Part B premiums could be reduced, the waiting continues. More than three months after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra ordered a reassessment of this year’s $170.10 standard monthly premium — a bigger-than-expected jump from $148.50 in 2021 — it remains uncertain when a determination will come and ...

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Spending on U.S. Medicines Rose 12% in 2021 Due to COVID-19 Vaccines and Therapies, Says IQVIA Institute for Human Data...

Spending on medicines in the United States, at estimated net manufacturer prices, reached $407 billion in 2021, up 12% over 2020, as COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics became widely available and added $29 billion in related spending. That’s according to a new U.S. Medicines Trends 2022 Report, released today by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. In ...

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Mental Health Shouldn’t Be “Treated Like A Stepchild” To Physical Health, Says HHS Chief

The Biden administration plans to ramp up mental health services to aid millions of Americans struggling from the disruptions, hardships and grief of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s top federal health official says, but needs more money from Congress to do “transformative work on mental health.” The comments by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier ...

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Naomi Judd’s Death Spotlights A National Mental Health Crisis Worsened By COVID-19

Millions of Americans struggled with their mental health well before COVID-19, but the pandemic hasn’t made shouldering mental illness any easier – an issue brought to light over the weekend after the death of country music star Naomi Judd.

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CMS Finalizes Rule That Calls For Standardized Plan Options, Network Adequacy Reviews For ACA Exchanges

Insurers on the Affordable Care Act will have to develop standardized plan options and prepare for network adequacy audits on the law’s insurance exchanges starting next year, according to a final rule. 

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