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.
Specialty drug trend remains high, although it decreased from 11.2% to 10.8% on a gross cost basis in Pharmacy Strategies Group’s 2026 State of Specialty Spend and Trend Report. Claim utilization is now the dominant driver of specialty drug trend as the percentage of members using specialty drugs rose to 5.5%. “For a decade, this ...
A federal appeals court has ruled that pharmaceutical manufacturers cannot unilaterally replace upfront discounts under the 340B Drug Pricing Program with after-the-fact rebates, affirming the federal government’s authority to approve how those price reductions are provided. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld lower court judgments against Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, ...
U.S. hospitals are now treating fewer patients with health insurance purchased through an ACA exchange. Hospitals are also seeing more uninsured patients and patients with skimpy commercial coverage. The patients with high-deductible commercial coverage seem to be waiting until later in the year, when they have met their deductibles, to have elective surgical procedures. Executives ...
A tiny federal agency tasked with protecting the public from injuries caused by lawn mowers and coffeemakers is demanding that some of the nation’s biggest health systems turn over detailed, personally identifiable medical records of all patients who seek help at their emergency rooms. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls ...
Figuring out who’s offering the best deal on heart surgeries or routine physicals isn’t the most pressing issue for everyday Americans. That hasn’t stopped lawmakers on Capitol Hill from trying to turn that kind of price transparency into their marquee bipartisan health care goal this year. Republican and Democratic lawmakers who advanced bills on the ...
The Trump administration cancelled $2 billion of research grants to University of California professors. Their legal team says it has proof that those terminations were unconstitutional.
The number of Nevadans enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans has fallen 12.5 percent in the months since an open enrollment period closed this January — a dropoff that’s double what the state saw last year and suggests higher prices and reduced subsidies were too much for some consumers to afford. Nevada — and the ...
GLP-1 drugs could lead to cost savings for workers and their employers by reducing employee sick leave, a new economic study finds. Researchers found that patients who used the drugs, sold under brand names including Ozempic and Wegovy, took 17% less long-term sick leave than people who didn’t use the medications. The study defines long-term sick leave ...
Employers are bracing for what could be the highest rise in health insurance premiums in 16 years in 2027, driving up the average cost of family coverage in California to more than $30,000 — the price of a new compact car. Health insurance companies expect the cost of medical services and prescription drugs to soar ...
The fate of the state’s $2 billion plan to maintain health insurance for low-income and disabled Californians is now in the hands of Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor and Republican administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. State Republicans appealed directly to Oz in a letter on Monday, asking him to reject Gov. ...