Medicare & Medicaid
News articles in this section include actions by federal regulators like the CMS and HHS, as well as information on Medicare and state Medicaid coverage and benefits.
Health insurers’ margins in Medicare Advantage were more than double those seen in other markets in 2021, reinforcing the way the program can produce strong financial returns for plans, a new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis shows. Why it matters: Private Medicare plans are expected to draw more than half of eligible beneficiaries this year. But government payments to ...
The insurance industry and Republicans are using the debt ceiling fight and President Biden’s vows not to cut Medicare to fend off changes to private Medicare Advantage plans, which are popular among the public but have faced criticism about their costs to the government. So far this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ...
The U.S. health department proposed on Tuesday three new pilot projects aimed at lowering prescription drug prices for people enrolled in government health insurance plans, including offering some essential generic drugs for $2 a month.
After railing at the injustices of U.S. health care for decades, Sen. Bernie Sanders in January became the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. The job gives the health care industry’s biggest Washington nemesis an unprecedented opportunity to shape health care reform in Congress.
The Biden administration has started allowing state Medicaid funds to be used to pay for groceries and dietary advice in an effort to promote better overall health and wellness among the population and to decrease the need for expensive medical interventions. Supporters of the effort, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, believe that utilizing medical ...
The Biden administration rolled out new guidance to drugmakers for meeting a new requirement to dole out rebates if their prices on Medicare Parts B and D go above inflation. The guidance, released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), implements a key part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. ...
Employer-sponsored health plans pay significantly more than Medicare for costly physician-administered drugs, threatening access to lifesaving treatments, according to a newly published analysis of claims data and Medicare files. What they found: Price markups increased between 2016 and 2020 for five of the top 10 drugs that account for the most spending and more than doubled ...
The Pill Club, an online women’s pharmacy, has reached an $18.3 million settlement with California authorities over claims it defrauded the state’s Medicaid program by prescribing birth control pills without adequate consultation and shipping tens of thousands of female condoms to customers who didn’t want them. Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the agreement Tuesday, a ...
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said any idea on sunsetting Social Security and Medicare belongs to Sen. Rick Scott—not the GOP. “Unfortunately, that was the Scott plan, that’s not a Republican plan,” McConnell said on a Kentucky radio program. McConnell’s comments about Scott, a GOP rival, come as the White House continues to spotlight how Republicans heckled — and apparently committed ...
Top Medicare and Medicaid officials want to create a “universal foundation” of quality measures aligned across all programs in a bid to ease reporting burdens and confusion. Officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services called for aligning quality measures across more than 20 agency programs in a letter in The New England Journal of ...