WASHINGTON — The CEO who pulled off the first major insurance company merger agreement of the summer also achieved what many executives might think impossible: He raised his company’s minimum wage, announced plans to up its contribution to workers’ health care and watched the stock soar by nearly 30% since January. But Aetna’s Mark Bertolini is used ...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A Democratic state lawmaker on Friday dropped his effort to allow people who are in the country illegally to buy private insurance through the state’s health insurance marketplace. Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, removed language seeking a federal waiver that would allow immigrants to purchase unsubsidized coverage through Covered California. His ...

Sutter Health Plus, the HMO health plan of Sacramento-based Sutter Health, has joined CaliforniaChoice and will offer 12 small group plan designs later this year. Orange-based CaliforniaChoice is a private exchange for employer groups and employees. Sutter recently received approval to join CaliforniaChoice from the state Department of Managed Health Care. Sutter said brokers and ...

The last major piece of President Barack Obama’s health care law could raise costs for thrifty consumers as well as large corporations and union members when it takes effect in 2018. The so-called Cadillac tax was meant to discourage extravagant coverage. Critics say it’s a tax on essentials, not luxuries. It’s getting attention now because ...

White House budget director Shaun Donovan called for a “more aggressive strategy” to thwart improper government payments to doctors, hospitals and insurance companies in a previously undisclosed letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell earlier this year. Government health care programs covering millions of Americans waste billions of tax dollars every year ...

As health care costs rise a bit faster than recent years, look for more health plans offered by employers and on public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act to pare their lists of doctor and hospital choices for 2016. Health insurers are already disclosing plans to maintain their business on government run exchanges under the ...