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.
With plenty of policy questions still up in the air, a new report suggests insurers are set to propose steep premium increases for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans in 2026. Researchers at KFF examined early filings from 105 insurers in 20 markets, including 19 states and the District of Columbia, and found that the medium ...
Blue Shield of California is conducting a second round of layoffs this year, with 138 more employees being laid off in September. The majority of the layoffs affect employees in Oakland and El Dorado, with the remaining cuts taking place in Long Beach, Woodland Hills, Rancho Cordova, San Diego, Lodi and Redding, according to regulatory ...
More than half of Americans — 57 percent — said in a new survey that they think the GOP’s sweeping package extending tax cuts and slashing welfare services will increase their health-care costs. Thirteen percent in the CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday said that the “big, beautiful bill” will lower their health-care costs and 33 percent said there will be ...
In late June 2025, the California legislature approved a delay to the new fertility benefit mandate for fully insured group health plans — including coverage for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and other specified services. Originally set to take effect July 1, 2025, under Senate Bill 729 (signed in Fall 2024), the mandate will now apply ...
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, is charting an ambitious path to reshape federal healthcare policy in line with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. His vision comes as President Trump on July 4 signed The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping package of reforms targeting Medicaid, Medicare, and the ACA marketplace. From plans to ...
H.R.1—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—contains several provisions that directly affect employer-provided benefit programs, primarily health and welfare programs.
Trump’s sweeping plan slashes Medicaid and food aid, putting millions of Californians at risk — especially low-income residents, undocumented immigrants and rural communities.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed on the 4th of July will take a $340 billion bite out of hospital budgets over a decade to pay for tax cuts and other Trump priorities. Then again, maybe it won’t.
Rising health costs and expected fallout from President Trump’s tax-and-spending law are casting a pall over major health insurers, who’ve been issuing a steady drip of grim financial forecasts over the past month. Why it matters: Higher drug costs and increased demand for services including mental health care are squeezing health plans. And the new law is ...
California is one of the most affordable states for buying health insurance through marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” according to a new analysis. The personal finance company WalletHub found that the average California household spends 5.84% of its income on these types of health insurance premiums. That’s among the ...