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.
A major House subcommittee is considering 15 bills to expand access to telehealth services as the clock ticks on a Dec. 31 deadline on pandemic-era flexibilities. The American Telemedicine Association has referred to 2024 as the “Super Bowl” of telehealth regulation as the trade group pushes Congress to make permanent the Medicare telehealth flexibilities implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
Prescriptions for biosimilar versions of AbbVie’s Humira (adalimumab) have spiked to 36% after leading pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark removed the branded reference product from its major national commercial formularies, according to STAT News. Citing a note to investors by analyst firm Evercore ISI, STAT reported that in the week ending April 5, there were almost 8,300 new prescriptions for Sandoz’s ...
Instead of enacting public option plans, states should target reinsurance programs, a new report from the Partnership for America's Health Care Future argues.
Uninsured individuals are more likely to skip or postpone medical care for more than a year because of cost (63%).
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with reactions from hospital industry lobbying groups and organizations. The Biden administration is proposing a 2.6% increase for inpatient hospitals’ payments for the coming fiscal year, a $3.3 billion increase over the current year’s payout, as well as other policy adjustments intended to shore up surgical care coordination, drug ...
A first-of-its-kind study from Stanford economist Neale Mahoney finds that efforts to help low-income Americans by buying up their medical debt aren’t going as planned.
Until last week, the system that is used to enroll people in federal Affordable Care Act insurance plans inadvertently allowed access by insurance brokers to consumers’ full Social Security numbers, information brokers don’t need.
Change Healthcare is allegedly being extorted by a second ransomware gang, mere weeks after recovering from an ALPHV attack. RansomHub claimed responsibility for attacking Change Healthcare in the last few hours, saying it had 4 TB of the company’s data containing personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to active US military personnel and other patients, medical ...
More than 144 million Americans’ medical information was stolen or exposed last year in a record-breaking number of health care data breaches, a USA TODAY analysis of Health and Human Services data found. After breaking records in 2023, the most significant breach hit in February when a ransomware attack targeted Change Healthcare, the nation’s largest health care ...
Health care data breaches soared to record-breaking levels in 2023, fueled by a surge in ransomware attacks and increased targeting of the third-party vendors hospitals and other health care providers use. Exposure of protected health information and personally identifiable information can put patients at risk of identity theft or insurance fraud. “Be careful not to share ...