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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.

Cancer Centers Say US Chemotherapy Shortage Is Leading To Treatment Complications

A growing shortage of common cancer treatments is forcing doctors to switch medications and delaying some care, prominent U.S. cancer centers say. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network said Wednesday that nearly all the centers it surveyed late last month were dealing with shortages of carboplatin and cisplatin, a pair of drugs used to treat a range of ...

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Employers Hope To Weather Inflation Without Shifting Healthcare Costs To Workers: Survey

Employers are bracing for 2024, fearing they’ll face inflation and soaring healthcare costs while still trying to recruit and retain workers in a tight labor market, a new survey shows.

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FDA allows temporary import of unapproved Chinese cancer drug to ease U.S. shortage

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the temporary importation of an unapproved chemotherapy drug from China in effort to ease an acute shortage of cancer drugs in the United States, according to an update posted to the agency’s website Friday.

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Apple Provides Powerful Insights Into New Areas Of Health

Apple today announced new health features in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10, expanding into two impactful areas and providing innovative tools and experiences across platforms. New mental health features allow users to log their momentary emotions and daily moods, see valuable insights, and easily access assessments and resources. iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch ...

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An Early Look At What Drove 2022’s Health Care Spending Slowdown

Altarum’s monthly Health Sector Economic Indicators (HSEI) spending series tracks US health care spending and its components on a monthly basis using data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and other sources to reflect as closely as possible the categories and spending totals published annually by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the National ...

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Younger People Driving More High-Cost Claims For Employers: Survey

Self-insured employers face myriad challenges in trying to manage growing healthcare costs, and one of those results from recent history, according to a survey by the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (NAHPC). “Employers are seeing a rise in high-cost claims for younger plan members, with $1 million+ claims disproportionately weighted toward this demographic,” the NAHPC survey ...

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Patients, Providers Still See Many Pain Points With ‘Digital Front Door’ And Care Access, Survey Finds

Despite the increased adoption of digital health tools and telehealth in the past three years, patients and providers see the “digital front door” as still being a less-than-ideal entry point into healthcare, according to a new Experian Health report. The report is based on a survey (PDF), conducted in December 2022, that reached 202 providers and 1,001 U.S. ...

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As Pandemic Flexibilities Unwind, Here’s How Enrollment In Different Types Of Coverage Could Change

As flexibilities rolled out during the COVID-19 pandemic wind down, there will be plenty of factors at play that could impact uninsured rates in the coming years. Analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) project that while the rate will increase from current levels, it will decline over the next decade from pre-pandemic levels. They ...

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Employers Face Soaring Demand For Obesity Care Benefits. Virtual Care Players Are Jumping In With A Slew Of Offerings

Employers are seeing surging demand from their workers for benefits that cover obesity treatment and this is opening up considerable market opportunities for virtual care players. A recent survey found that 44% of people with obesity would change jobs to gain coverage for treatment. And more than half of workers would stay at a job they ...

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Denials of Health Insurance Claims Are Rising — And Getting Weirder

Millions of Americans in the past few years have run into this experience: filing a health care insurance claim that once might have been paid immediately but instead is just as quickly denied. If the experience and the insurer’s explanation often seem arbitrary and absurd, that might be because companies appear increasingly likely to employ ...

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