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.
Teladoc-Owned BetterHelp To Pay $7.8M To Online Therapy Users For Alleged Data Misuse, Per FTC Order
The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with online therapy company BetterHelp, which is owned by Teladoc, over allegations that it shared consumers’ health data with companies like Facebook and Snapchat for advertising purposes. As part of a proposed order announced Thursday, BetterHelp is banned from sharing consumers’ health data, including sensitive information about mental ...
During the peak COVID timeframe in 2021, the U.S. spent nearly $4.3 trillion on health care. Government insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, made up 42% (or a whopping $1.8 trillion of national health care spending) in 2021. That’s according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which says private insurance programs, including employer-sponsored ...
Self-insured employers view the cost of specialty drugs as a major challenge in providing health benefits, according to a survey released yesterday by the Midwest Business Group on Health (MBGH). Cheryl Larson, MBGH’s president and CEO, told Fierce Healthcare that “the new million-dollar treatments approved by the FDA; 30 of our employers said that this is a ...
Eli Lilly announced Wednesday a series of price cuts that would lower the price of the most commonly used forms of its insulin 70% and said it will automatically cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 for people who have private insurance and use participating pharmacies.
Despite rising costs, employers will continue to offer healthcare coverage to their workers, and they don’t see that ending anytime soon, if ever, according to a report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
As pandemic-era policies come to an end, tens of thousands of Southern Californians are expected to lose out on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, come April. Experts estimate about 330,000 people in Los Angeles County and approximately 160,000 in Orange County will be ineligible for Medi-Cal in April when states resume the redetermination process. The number of ...
As reported by Reuters, an analysis by the health care research firm 3 Axis Advisors found a roster of drugmakers raised prices in the U.S. last month on more than 350 drugs. The manufacturers include major industry players like AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Pfizer, and Sanofi.
Despite federal regulations on price transparency, many people still have a hard time comparing costs between hospitals. According to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which uses data assembled by health care software company Turquoise Health, there are limited mandated standards for how hospitals should classify and share prices, and a lack of regulation which ...
Humana is exiting the employer group commercial market after a strategic review of its business lines, the insurer announced Thursday.
Despite increased health care spending in 2021, Health Savings Account (HSA) enrollees ended the year with higher balances in their accounts, according to a new study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The analysis outlines some interesting findings about HSA accounts in the year after the worst of the COVID pandemic. For the report, researchers looked ...