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Industry Updates

This broad category includes articles concerning health insurance costs, carrier and health plan news, changing benefits technology, and surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others on employee benefits.

How Weight-Loss Drugs Are Rewriting the Playbook for Treating Obesity

Liz McCabe wasn’t a typical candidate for Wegovy, one of the popular new weight-loss drugs. She is healthy and active. Her body-mass index this past spring barely put her in the category of obesity, a qualification for the medication. It was her history of “yo-yo” dieting that made the difference. The 45-year-old vice president at ...

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Health Insurance Premiums Now Cost $24,000 A Year, Survey Says

The average employer-sponsored health insurance premium for U.S. families rose 7% to almost $24,000 this year, according to an annual KFF survey of more than 2,000 U.S. companies, compared with a 1% increase last year. Premiums for individual employer coverage rose at the same rate.

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Some Health Care Legislation Could Pass Congress Despite Leadership Turmoil

The leadership turmoil in the U.S. House of Representatives has clouded the outlook for passing health care legislation this year. However, there’s also a lot of momentum in Congress behind the health policy work that already has been done, so some health care reforms “have a chance of hitching a ride on a big catch-all bill at the end of the year.

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US Work-From-Home Rates Drop To Lowest Since Pandemic

Fewer than 26% of US households still have someone working remotely at least one day a week, a sharp decline from the early 2021 peak of 37%, according to the two latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys. Only seven states plus Washington, DC, have a remote-work rate above 33%.

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U.S. Halts Collection On Some Past-Due Covid Loans, Sparking Federal Probes

The U.S. government has halted some efforts to collect an estimated $62 billion in past-due pandemic loans made to small businesses, concluding that aggressive attempts to recover the money — a portion of which may have been lost to fraud — could cost more than simply writing off the debt. The Small Business Administration, which ...

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Insurers Bash Biden’s Mental Health Parity Proposal

Insurers and some employers contend the Biden administration’s recent proposal to bolster coverage of mental and behavioral care could actually backfire and make it more difficult for patients to access quality care. The big picture: The health care payers are urging the administration to drop major features of its plan, including a new formula to determine whether insurers ...

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Rite Aid Is Closing 154 Stores as It Starts to Shed Debt

The pharmacy chain, once the largest in the United States, detailed a batch of store closures in a bankruptcy court filing.

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Kaiser Permanente And Labor Unions Reach Tentative Deal After Strike

Kaiser Permanente and labor unions reached a tentative deal Friday morning, a little more than a week after workers at the nation’s largest health care nonprofit organization went on strike.

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What The Rite Aid Bankruptcy Filing Means For Customers, Prescriptions

The Rite Aid Corporation has filed for bankruptcy protection in order to reduce the company’s sizable debt and restructure. The move, announced Sunday, comes amid Rite Aid’s ongoing financial challenges, including those posed by opioid-related lawsuits.

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EEOC-Initiated Lawsuits Shot Up 52% In Latest Fiscal Year

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed 143 discrimination lawsuits in its just-completed fiscal year—a 52% increase from the 94 reported last year, a spike in activity that employment attorneys predict will be exceeded this fiscal year.

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