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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.

White House Wants Federal Workers Back To The Office By Fall

The Biden administration wants to “aggressively” get federal workers back in the office by September or October, according to an email to the Cabinet on Friday, as Axios initially reported. White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients wrote, “We are returning to in-person work because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to ...

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Survey: 73% of Companies Struggle to Get Workers Back to the Office

Indeed, 73 percent of organizations surveyed report challenges getting workers to return to the workplace. Because of this pushback, 68 percent are considering or implementing talent strategies to increase on-site work.

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NIH Taps Jeanne Marrazzo To Succeed Fauci As Infectious-Disease Chief

Jeanne M. Marrazzo, a University of Alabama at Birmingham infectious-disease expert, will succeed Anthony S. Fauci this fall as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, federal officials announced last Wednesday.

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CMS Proposes Updates To The Hospital Price Transparency Rule

On July 13, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed key changes to the hospital price transparency rule. These proposed changes are meant to strengthen standards for disclosing hospital prices and provide more enforcement authority to regulators, and if finalized, will go into effect on January 1, 2024. This article provides an overview ...

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Generational Differences Should Be Addressed In Benefit Offerings, Research Finds

As the workplace continues to evolve, employers will need to offer a wider variety of benefit options to meet the expectations of different generations within their workforce. “Since the pandemic, employers have faced a dramatically different workforce dynamic with a sustained increase in hybrid and remote workers, which is reshaping expectations,” said Patrick Leary, corporate ...

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Extreme Heat Is Here. Can Insurance Help Protect Us?

People buy insurance to protect against unlikely but devastating events, big catastrophes that drive households and businesses to financial ruin and bankruptcy. That makes insurance most people’s first line of defense against climate disasters, which now destroy tens of billions of dollars of property in the United States every year. It makes good sense to ...

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How Much And Why 2024 Premiums Are Expected To Grow In Affordable Care Act Marketplaces

For 2024, across 320 insurers participating in the 50 states and DC, this analysis shows a median proposed premium increase of 6%. In addition to inflation, insurers also mention changes in pandemic-related costs and the unwinding of Medicaid continuous coverage, though the latter are having a small, if any, effect on premiums.

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Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Inks Partnership With Pharmacy Navigation Startup Scripta

Scripta Insights, a digital health company focused on pharmacy navigation, is teaming up with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to bring transparent drug pricing to patients. Scripta will integrate Cost Plus Drugs’ discounted pricing into its platform Med Mapper, which the company said maps every drug on the market to every possible way users ...

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Public Opinion on Prescription Drugs and Their Prices

KFF research has consistently found prescription drug costs to be an important health policy area of public interest and public concern. Below are some key findings on the public’s experience with and perceptions of prescription drugs and their prices. For public awareness of some of the prescription drug cost provisions included in the 2022 Inflation ...

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Why Insurers Are Paying Double For The Same Procedure In The Same Hospital

Hospitals charge commercial health plans two to three times more than what they charge the same insurer’s Medicare Advantage plans for the same procedure, a new study in Health Affairs found. Why it matters: While it’s well established that private plans are typically charged more than Medicare, this study leverages the latest available pricing data to shed light on differing dynamics between ...

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