By sheer number of covered lives, Kaiser Permanente has been California’s largest health insurer for decades. But if Anthem gets its way — no longer. The Indianapolis-based insurer is currently the second-largest health insurer in the Golden State, and one of the three largest health insurers in the nation. Its planned mega-merger with Cigna is ...

About 9.9 million people have signed up and paid for health insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law, the administration said Tuesday, a slight dip from a previous count but on track toward the administration’s year-end goal of 9.1 million. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that 84 percent of those, ...

As the open enrollment season for employer-sponsored health insurance gets underway this fall, experts say there’s one group that should definitely consider changing plans: people who have coverage through their former employer under the federal law known as COBRA. COBRA allows people who leave their jobs to keep their job-based group coverage for 18 months, ...

The White House is calling for a “more aggressive strategy” to reduce improper payments made by Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a letter made public to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Center for Public Integrity obtained the February letter — written by Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun ...

BOSTON — President Obama rallied union workers here Monday, unveiling a new executive order that will require federal contractors to offer employees up to seven days of paid sick leave, a move he sought to contrast with Republican economic policies. Obama announced the new directive, which the White House said could benefit more than 300,000 ...

On Tuesday, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at CMS announced a new pilot program that will allow Medicare Advantage insurers to lower beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs as a way to encourage them to use high-quality services and potentially reduce overall costs in the long term, Modern Healthcare reports. The five-year program begins Jan. 1, ...