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.
Health insurance CEOs testifying before Congress about whether they’re to blame for soaring health care costs have a plan: pass the buck. Five CEOs of major insurers will make the case that the health care premiums they set are rising because of prices charged by other health care players — like hospitals and drugmakers — ...
Six annual spending bills for the current budget year are awaiting action in the Senate this week, including a key appropriations package that would fund the Department of Health and Human Services through Sept. 30. But the sweeping government funding package is now in peril as Senate Democrats vowed to oppose it in the wake ...
The House passed a key appropriations package that would fund the Department of Health and Human Services through Sept. 30, including a step toward reforms for pharmacy benefit managers. The package passed by a 341-88 vote, and it includes elements that would prevent PBMs from tying compensation in Part D to the list price of ...
The House Ways and Means Committee hearing has concluded, bringing a long day of questioning for major health insurance executives to an end. More than nine hours of total questioning across two hearings touched on a slew of factors impacting the affordability of healthcare: the Affordable Care Act, claims denials, prior authorization and consolidation. Paul ...
Hospital leaders are getting long-awaited clarity from Congress this week as lawmakers unveil a bipartisan healthcare deal tied to a broader government funding package. The 771-page proposal includes major wins for providers, including a multiyear delay of Medicaid DSH cuts, key Medicare payment extensions for rural hospitals and permanent hospital-at-home authority. It also preserves pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities ...
A lack of Democratic cooperation and strict Senate rules threaten the legislative viability of the White House framework.
House negotiators have put two major pharmacy benefit manager provisions in big, “must pass” spending package that’s now speeding toward a vote on the House floor. One provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 package would require PBMs to provide employers and other health plan sponsor fiduciaries with detailed prescription drug benefits tracking reports, to help ...
The CEOs of most of the nation’s largest health insurers plan to lay blame for rising healthcare costs on hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and specialty providers during testimony before Congress on Jan. 22. In written testimonies submitted ahead of back-to-back hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the House Ways and Means Committee, the top executives ...
While the conversation at the House E&C Subcommittee hearing this morning was fairly varied, in the early questioning before the Ways and Means Committee, the debate over the Affordable Care Act has been front and center. Ranking Member Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, said in his opening remarks that the expiry of the enhanced subsidies in the ...
Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan, bicameral health care deal early Tuesday morning they hope lawmakers will pass later this week as part of a four-bill government spending package. Alongside funding for the departments of Defense, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security through Sept. 30, senior appropriators are proposing a crackdown on drug intermediates ...